


all the other ones

by neville



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drabble Collection, Ficlet Collection, M/M, Multi, One Shot Collection, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-08-18 18:50:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 36,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16522658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neville/pseuds/neville
Summary: Drabbles, fics, and ficlets from Tumblr that, for whatever reason, I decided didn't merit being their own work here.





	1. Banjo Boy (Draco x Neville)

**Author's Note:**

> these works - and more! - can be found at longbottomfranks.tumblr.com/tagged/i_write_shit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> harold and maude au! if you've not seen harold and maude, it is a GREAT film and you should watch it

He’s got dark hair and he’s grinning at me from the pew behind.

-

“Neville,” he says from my driver’s seat, a flower tucked behind his ear. He drives like a fucking maniac, deathly reckless, and I have no idea if he even has a driver’s license; if he does, he’s long since forsaken the Highway Code for his own.

He takes me to a graveyard and sprawls out on the ground like we’re about to have a picnic. He holds out a flower for me, and I know he wants me to put it behind my ear, too, but I still think he’s psychotic, so I just hold it and let it twist between my fingers.

“Do you like flowers?” he asks. “They grow, and wither, and die, and are reborn. I think they’re amazing.”

“They look nice on a mantelpiece,” I say, morbid in a sea of ceramic death. Neville laughs from the grass.

“So do you,” he says, “but I think you’d be nicer if you stepped off it and got a little closer to the fireplace.”

I don’t know what he means. He doesn’t seem to care.

Too worried for the welfare of my car, I drive him home. He lives in a cottage with a garden full of bright, blooming flowers, ivy creeping up white stone walls, and his rooms are filled with growing flowers. He sits on the floor, not on any chair, kimono sleeves swishing against his fingers.

“Tell me your name,” he says, “and tell me what you smell.”

-

He listens almost exclusively to Cat Stevens records and eats his lunch anywhere from quarries to scrapyards. I have nothing better to do, so I join him. I tell him about father’s frivolous attempts to set me up with a woman; he laughs, and tells me about life.

He knows a lot. He must be the same age as me, but he’s wise like a guru and fearless like a biker, swinging his legs over the edge of a cliff as we eat sandwiches.

“Your problem,” he says, “is that you’ve retired from life.”

He runs screaming across the field barefoot, laughing like everything’s funny, and when I finally catch up with him by the car, he pushes a flower behind my ear, too. I leave it there.

I think he might be right; he watches the sky rush by from the windows as he steams along the roads.

-

“My parents,” he says. We’re sitting having a picnic at a pier and watching the gulls shriek by; I expected him to be the sort of sick bastard to throw his lunch to them, but he doesn’t, lying propped up on his elbows, the setting sun like melting cheese setting his features aglow. He makes it look beautiful to be alive. “They died, when I was young. I made a promise to live the rest of their lives for them, so I’m living three lives.” He takes a bite out of his sandwich, and a gull steals the other.

“You can’t live that much life,” I argue. “It’s ridiculous.”

“You can live however much life you want to live,” he rebuffs simply.

“I feel like I’ve been dead since I was born,” I admit. “Big mansions. Fancy cars. Three keyboard organs - it’s not for me. That’s empty. Those girls my father forces me to see, they want my money. They don’t look at me. They don’t care about me, or who I am - no-one cares about who I am.” I think I might be crying, but I can’t tell; Neville has sat up, a hand teetering over my cheek, catching a tear I feel slide down. He’s beautiful. “I want to live, Neville. I want to know what that’s like.”

When we steam down the roads, I let my hand out of the window and catch the air rushing between my fingers. He takes me to a greenhouse and I sweat and feel clammy; he pulls his shirt off and stands half-naked, arms extended. “Can you feel the life?” he asks, and turns abruptly, coming towards me and pressing his hand to my chest, hard. “I can feel it.”

I kiss him, and touch his neck, and feel his pulse. I wonder if he really does feel mine.

When I pull back, I reach my hands out into the air and some of my fingers graze plant leaves that seems to move back against me. “I feel it,” I whisper.

“Live it,” he says, and grabs my hand, laughing as he pulls me back to the car.

-

I tuck two flowers behind each ear the next morning and lie shirtless in the garden; Neville plays the banjo on a stool with the paint cracking off. He can’t play, not really, but he makes noises and they sound good to me.

“Am I living yet?” I ask him. He peers at me.

“Ask yourself that,” he shrugs.

“I am.”

“Good,” he says. “Hold on to that life. It’s important. Make use of it. Be embarrassing, and loud, and true, and live it for those who can’t.”

I think of my own parents, and then his; he keeps a photo in the cottage, the only one he didn’t burn. I’m not sure I can live three lives, but with him, I want to live mine.

“Where are we going?” he asks as we tear down the highways, head out the window.

“Does it matter?” I ask. He grins.

“Guess not.”


	2. Grimmauld Place (Percy x Sirius)

Grimmauld Place is quiet with everybody gone; Sirius wanders the halls and listens to the creak of the floorboards as his boots bump over them, plays Regulus’s Beatles records and lets them fill the house, speaks to Kreacher as if he’s not going to receive torrential abuse in return.

It’s still quiet: Percy doesn’t snore or make noises when he sleeps, just breathes, and Sirius watches the hypnotic rise and fall of his freckled chest, decorated with tiny ginger curls. He looks, for once, calm.

Sirius had never seen someone so tightly wound up in his life.

Percy seems to be aware that he’s being admired, and his pale eyelids flicker; what sounds like it might be a chuckle escapes his lips, and he shuts his eyes again. “Good morning,” he says softly.

“Morning,” Sirius grins, kissing into the wisps of Percy’s chest hair. “I do dearly hope you’re not regretting anything right now.”

“I’m regretting a few things, but none of them have anything to do with you. Rather, I feel  _ecstatic_.” He tilts his head, lets Sirius capture his lips, grins. “You are something else. Thank you for not pushing me away.”

“What do you mean?” Sirius shifts.

“I know my parents and I don’t see eye to eye, and I’m having to maintain the image of supporting the Ministry despite the fact that I have long since realised they are either despicable or a bunch of ignorant buffoons, so most people see me and choose to spit at me. You…” Percy winds a hand in Sirius’s wild hair; it’s, to be entirely truthful, not that he said a terrible lot to Sirius (they were crashing together over the table instead), but that sort of acceptance is a rarity and a commodity, something he treasures, something he’d put in a little golden trinket box and wear the key for around his neck. “I know you don’t care about me in any way, but I would like you to know that I’m grateful.”

“Merlin. Here I thought I was in for a shag that’d run off before the morning, never mind one that’d talk my bloody ear off.”

“I can stop talking.”

“No, don’t, I love it when you tell me how good I am.”

Percy giggles; he winds his fingers in with Sirius’s as they kiss, and as Sirius moves to straddle him he wraps his arms around Sirius’s back to pull him closer, kissing and laughing and looking so wonderfully expectant.

* * *

He takes everything at such exacts that he makes his own breakfast; improvising doesn’t come naturally to Percy, and he thinks he’s stretched it coming here at all, so Sirius leaves him to his own culinary devices, slightly ruddy as they seem.

It’s not a bad breakfast, though; a good one for a shy cook, and as Percy slings his coat on to leave, he turns to Sirius. His eyes are pleading. Sirius complies.

“You can come back any time,” he says, leaning in the doorframe. “Shag. No shag. Shag preferred, but company’s always good.”

“I’ll be back,” Percy promises, leaning up to kiss Sirius again; he’s going to miss those lips, constant and playful, when he gets back to his uncomfortable apartment. Sirius, too, will miss Percy and the eruption of freckles on the small of his back, and he will miss finding new ways to kiss them all.

He’s not yet in love with Percy himself; he’s in love with the company, and with the renewed feeling of warm hands on his skin. One day he’ll love Percy like crazy, love the way he looks away shyly when he’s being flirted with, love the way he falls asleep reading, love him from his scuffed heels to the relentless curl of his hair-

But for right now, he remembers Percy’s touch, and he feels like he’s finally not so alone.


	3. Explosions and Prayers (Neville x Seamus)

Seamus clambers inelegantly up from the bridge; Neville offers him a hand, heaving him back onto the surface. “They’ll definitely blow?”

“Take the whole bridge down,” Seamus nods, wiping the sweat from his forehead; navigating the bridge from below by means of climbing is not a pleasant experience, a repertoire of spells between him and Neville proving no reassurance. “Should keep them away. For at least a while.”

“Right. Okay.” Neville pauses. “Thanks. And stay safe – please?” It comes out more pleading than he’d intended, desperate: he’s had no better reassurance throughout the year than seeing Seamus when he wakes up, or the poking out of Seamus’s tongue when he applies whatever Neville has told him to to treat his wounds.

“I’ve survived explosions for the last seven years – should hopefully do it again,” he says, squeezing Neville’s shoulder. Neville doesn’t know whether or not to kiss him, doesn’t know whether that would make it too hard to leave – Seamus hugs him, tight, for the briefest of moments, and goes dashing off into the distance with a skip and a wave.

Neville watches him go, and prays they both make it through the night.


	4. Salad (Percy x Audrey)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aggressively scottish audrey weasley, soulmate au

Most of the words on people’s arms make sense: hellos, greetings, apologies-for-running-into-you, that sort of thing, and Percy supposes that, while making it difficult to find your soulmate amongst the wash of greetings, at least they make sense.

His arm is almost always hidden by sleeve or caked in makeup, because his is just downright expletive, and it doesn’t often stay off of his mind: how could he love someone like that? He’s a sensible person with rigorous scheduling, and yet she…  _assuming_  it’s a she after a few short-lived stumbles with Oliver back at Hogwarts, seems the opposite of that.

It’s what he thinks about when he’s knee-deep in mind-numbingly boring paperwork and on the lift out; he always walks home, to keep his mind and body stimulated and healthy, and though he tries to stay aware and in the moment, his thoughts are restless and constantly wander.

Which is how he manages to end up pulled aside with a knife to his throat in a slimy alleyway; he hates knives, he really does, and tries to focus on the counting of his breaths: in, two, three, four, out, two, three, four…

“Gi’us your fuckin’ wallet,” an undeniably Scottish voice demands, and Percy looks up so fast he almost nicks himself on the blade.

She’s what she was expecting, and isn’t: Scottish, for one (he seems to have a type), about average height and build with a reasonably flat chest. She’s grubby and bald-headed, wearing a black vest and a pair of baggy camo trousers and thick boots, her calloused hand clinging to her own knife.

“Oh, dear,” Percy says, frowning, “how do I fall in love with you?”

The woman quirks an eyebrow and, with a quick gesture, whoever it is behind Percy lets go of him. “Could ask you the same question,” she grunts, rolling up her sleeve; he does the same, admiring the little conversation they’ve made. “Fuckin’ poncy bastard. Maybe I should just cut you and live lonely.”

“Please don’t,” Percy says tightly. She laughs.

“Wasn’t gonna. Just winding your pretty little face up, ain’t I?” She points a thumb and her little crew scatter like mice, leaving just her and Percy in the alleyway, staring at each other as if they both can’t quite believe what’s just happened. “It is, though, really. Pretty, I mean. You. You’re not so bad-looking.”

Percy’s not sure he can return the compliment, what with the amount of dirt under her fingernails, so instead he smiles weakly. “Maybe we should get to the names before the flirting. I’m Percy.”

“Fuck, you’ve even got a twat name!” She belly-laughs, but leans forward to shake his hand so heartily she misses that he’s only shaking it gingerly. “On the street, the name’s Salad, but for you, my name’s Audrey.”

“Salad?” Percy frowns.

“Yeah, cus I cut people up like a salad,” she shrugs. “Anyway, cutie. What’s the plan?”

“I’d like you to come back to mine,” Percy starts, and Audrey’s eyebrows raise in what he assumes to be sheer disbelief, “and please, for the love of all that is holy, have a shower.”

She laughs. “Sure can do, Perce. I think we’re gonna get along.”

As she reaches over to grab his hand and swing it in between them, he’s not so sure; but, he supposes, she’s his soulmate for a reason: he’ll grow to love her, love this, and they’ll live together, maybe have children, get married, and the faster he can get her away from her street thugs the better…

“Oi,” Audrey says sharply, tugging at Percy’s hand. “Anyone in there? What are you thinkin’ about?”

“You,” he says sheepishly.


	5. Sarge (Neville x Lee)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hot fuzz au. probably one of my favourite things i've ever written, though i've no idea why - i just love it! it makes me so happy. you probably have to have seen the film to enjoy this, though

The only thing Neville is looking forward to in Ottery St Catchpole is, perhaps, the fresh air.

He shifts on the train as he clings to the poor peace lily he’s having to take with him; she’s not going to like the journey much at all, and he sighs into her leaves.

“Sorry, Hannah,” he says. “Not long now.”

-

It’s worse than he ever could have imagined: the pub is full of underage losers with voices like helium led by an indignant teen by the name of Ginny, the streets are full of leering young adults, and the person he’s just arrested for trying to not only drive drunk but with a traffic cone on his head turns out to be one of the other police constables.

“Cheer up,” he says, poking his pierced tongue out. “Means you’ve got work to do, doesn’t it?” Neville twitches; Lee seems to have all the professionalism of a goat, and twice the amount of cheek, and yet somehow they’ve been lumped as partners. Peace lily or no, he has limits - first, to be sent to this boring little village; second, to have such irritatingly poor colleagues…

He’s going to go mad and get back to London to be transferred to a mental hospital.

“Hey,” Lee calls from across the room, flinging over the car keys, which Neville catch effortlessly. “Chin up, pretty. Got a missing swan, belonging to one Luna Lovegood.”

“Lovegood?” Neville frowns. “Come on, Lee, stop taking the piss.”

“Says Sergeant Longbottom!” one of the Trouble Twins calls from his desk, and the other one joins in for their mingled hyena laugh. Neville resists the urge to throttle them both.

“Nah, she’s real, sadly. Bit off the deep end, but nice enough. You’re driving.”

“So I noticed,” Neville mutters, jangling the keys. “How does one go about catching a swan, exactly?”

-

With difficulty, apparently.

Neville tries to ignore the stifled giggles of Rolf Scamander, nosy neighbour, as he takes a reckless dive for the bird, who screeches and increases her pace as he slams full throttle into the ground.

“Bloody hell,” he grumbles as he gets up. “I’d rather be chasing a cat burglar.”

“What? The cats are even harder to catch,” Lee laughs, resting an arm on Neville’s shoulder. “We could just lose it a bit further out and have lunch at the pub. Luna’d be none the wiser.”

“Absolutely not!” Neville snaps, appalled at just the suggestion of such an act. “We are going to catch this swan, Jordan, because that is our job and what we are paid to do.” He cracks his knuckles. “Now come on; we’ve a swan to catch.”

-

Neville does not catch the swan before lunch at the pub, and decides to begin a lifelong rivalry with the species out of stubborn frustration.

“Don’t worry, sarge,” Lee purrs. “It always takes some time to get used to the swing of things. How are you enjoying our little town?”

“It’s nice,” he says, taking a sip of his apple juice. “Quaint.”

“You mean shit,” Lee corrects. “Well, you’re a city boy. I guess that’s to be expected.” He has a gulp of his pint. “I’ve been here all my life. Never known anything different. It’s good, you know.”

“I imagine I’ll get used to it,” Neville replies, wishing beyond nothing for a good London patrol; nobody’s doing anything here, and why his talent and arrest records are being wasted, he has no idea. Lee smiles sympathetically.

On the bright side, Neville catches the swan.

-

He gets on with his duties and tries to find excitement and fun in the little things, but fails rather spectacularly. Lee’s Lee: he eats lunch with a pint at the pub and offers snide comments and little effort until Neville asks for it. The newspaper publishes articles on him, and spell his name wrong so he’s christened Log-in-Bottom by the Trouble Twins, who seem to think they’re being funny.

“I mean, it is kinda funny,” Lee shrugs. “You’ve got to admit.”

“No,” Neville says sharply, “it isn’t.”

“Alright, children, stop bickering,” Crouch Jr grunts as he passes a pair of tickets to Neville. “I’d like it if you two could do the whole department a favour and show some responsible face at this local production - or is that too hard for you?”

“No, sir,” Neville replies, trying to keep the anger out of his voice; it wouldn’t do to be angry now. “We’ll go. Lee?”

“Well, my usual style’s action, but I’ll give it a go,” he says with a smile. Neville resists the urge to roll his eyes, and hides his own smile behind his hand; there’s a lot to be said for Lee, he supposes, playful and witty. Sometimes. If he’s lucky. “Who doesn’t enjoy a bit of forbidden romance?” He grins, elbowing Neville.

“Get off, Lee,” he grumbles, but half-heartedly.

As expected, the play is abysmal; the actors are about as convincing as a twig, and having to smile at them at the after-party strains Neville’s cheeks. Lee, thankfully, is better, knowing them both a little growing up (“not that I was ever friends with Pansy and Blaise, mind; pair of twats”), and makes conversation for the both of them.

“And how on Earth did they ever become actors?” Neville grumbles, chewing on the energy bar he’d brought with him and wishing he had a coffee or the like.

“Money,” Lee replies. “They’ve got tons of it. That’s all.” He leans on the counter. “Those kind of divisions really come out in towns like these, you know? But we put up with it, like I’m sure you do in old London.” He takes a sip of his pint. “At least that play’s over, right?”

“Yes. Right.” Neville allows himself a rare smile as he looks down at Lee, leaning in to add a “thank God”.

-

It’s been a long while since Neville’s last been to a crime scene, and he has to suppress the urge to whoop with glee as he passes under the tape.

“Morning,” Theo mumbles, running a hand through his hair.

“What’s happened here, then?” Neville asks, nodding a curt good morning to Officers Brown and Weasley (just Fred this time, thankfully).

“It’s what it looks like,” Fred shrugs. “Car accident. Parkinson and Zabini, as you can see, have been rather made mincemeat of.” (This is not an exaggeration; were Neville not so hardy from his years in London, the sight might’ve made him sick.) “So, sarge, you’re the expert here. What’s the plan?”

“Plan?” Neville frowns. “Cordon the area, single lane of traffic, visible police presence.” He looks over at Lee, who shrugs.

“Sounds right to me,” he offers.

“Then get on it with it,” Theo nods. “I’ll call the meds to clean up. Keep the public at arm’s length, alright? We don’t want to worry them; there’s just been a terrible accident.”

“Accident?” Neville frowns. “Sir, that didn’t look like an accident to me - and, by the way, it’s meant to be ‘collision’ now. Revised police vocabulary.”

“Right. Fine. A terrible collision; mouth shut, Lee, and let’s get that cordon up.”

Neville nods, taking every spare moment to fold his arms and muse; it seems strange, really, for the beheading as demonstrated on poor Parkinson to be as a result of the same collision that’s merely left Zabini a mess on the dashboard. Lee saunters up and prods him.

“What?”

“You don’t think it’s an accident, do you?” Lee asks.

“Collision.”

“You don’t think it’s a collision, do you?”

“It’s not my place to speculate without evidence, but not really, no. It just seems strange, like there’s something off about it.” Neville shrugs. “Never mind. I’m sure we’ll find out if there is any trouble in the investigation.”

“If anyone bothers to look,” Lee adds helpfully.

“Oi, Log-arse!” Fred calls; Neville sighs, and ducks back under the tape, Lee watching him go and poking his tongue to his cheek as he eyes up the wreckage.

-

Neville is beginning to feel like he knows the pub better than the back of his own hand; he sighs as he takes another drink of his apple juice, and Lee glances over.

“Something up?” he asks.

“No. I’m just tired.” Neville shifts over as two other patrons shove in next to him, pressing his lips together to conceal his irritation.

“Ah, look who it is!” one of them jeers. “Sergeant Longbottom, what a delight to finally meet you. I’ve heard so much about your crime-solving exploits.” He holds out a hand that Neville shakes politely. “Draco Malfoy.”

“That huge mansion that takes up the entire village skyline?” Daphne adds, leaning in; Neville’s tried to avoid her smug face like the plague, but she seems fixated on him. “That’s his, and it’s all off kitchen utensils, can you believe it?”

“It’s a profitable market,” Draco grumbles, and as he makes to light a cigarette, Neville neatly snatches it from his hand and points a thumb to the door.

“Outside,” he says gruffly.

Draco rolls his eyes. “Miserable git.”

Daphne laughs, watching him go. “Don’t mind him, sarge. He’s always like that.”

“Is he now,” Neville mutters into his glass. Lee laughs, slinging their elbows together.

“Come on,” he says. “I’ve got something that’ll cheer you up. Point Break or Bad Boys II?”

-

“Have you ever fired two guns while jumping through the air? Or one? Ever fired a gun into the sky while screaming ‘aaah’? Ever knocked a man out with one punch?”

Suddenly, the barrage of questions Lee had posed to Neville in the first few days they’d worked together makes sense: these films, Neville notes, have no grounding in reality whatsoever and plot lines so unbelievably thick that a two-year-old could follow them easily, and yet he finds that they’re somewhat… enjoyable, with a cornetto and a glass of wine.

“Well?” Lee asks with his trademark wide grin, pushing the DVD back into its box.

“They were very interesting films,” Neville says carefully, and Lee smiles, knotting his fingers in Neville’s hair and pulling him down for a short and nearly chaste kiss; Neville raises an eyebrow, but Lee doesn’t seem to respond.

“Great,” he says, “I’ve got loads more where they came from. Now how about some Zombies’ Party?”

-

Neville sighs as he ducks under a flapping line of police tape, folding his arms as he examines the wreckage that once was Draco Malfoy’s mansion.

“Another accident?” he asks Lee.

“Gas explosion,” is the answer.

“Don’t you think it’s a little strange that there are two accidents like this in a row? Especially considering Malfoy’s clearly well-despised temperament?”

Lee shrugs. “Accidents happen - or, should I say, collisions happen.”

Neville stifles a laugh. “Shut up.”

Lee nods, wrapping an arm around Neville’s neck and leaning in close, breath warm where Neville’s skin is exposed. “Don’t let anyone else hear you think it’s not an accident, though, alright? They’ll take the piss.”

Neville frowns, glancing up; Lavender is waving at him from closer to the crime scene. “Lee, what if it’s not an accident? We can’t just ignore that possibility.”

“Nev,” Lee pleads.

“I’m a policeman. It’s our duty to find out what’s happened.”

Of course, they laugh at him.

-

They laugh at him all the way to the village fair, where the other officers have themselves some rip-roaring fun while Neville sits by himself and just thinks; there’s something off about this village, that’s for sure, but he just can’t pinpoint what.

“Sergeant Longbottom?” a hopeful young voice inquires; Neville looks up at the bright face of Colin Creevey, who’s far too lovely to be angry with, bad spelling or no. “I was hoping to talk to you about something - to do with the accidents.”

Neville sits up, nodding. “Of course; what is it?”

“Well, I’ve got a few things to do first, but why don’t we talk by the church? At three?”

Neville nods. “Of course. Thank you for coming forward, Mr Creevey.”

As Colin hurries off, camera raised, Neville allows himself a small smile - he’s not entirely wrong after all, then, and he stands up, finding Lee armed with a huge puff of candy floss. “Hi, Lee.”

“Hiya, Nev!” Lee says cheerily. “Look, you know how you love me and all?”

“Do I, now?”

“Course you do. I’m charming and wonderful and there’s a really big teddy bear over there and I want it.”

Neville snorts, wandering over to the stall and picking up the play rifle, so light under his hands; he barely even pays attention to the rules, just to what’ll get Lee that bear - Lee’s been good, and nice, and supportive, and Neville wishes there was a better way to show his gratitude than just getting Lee a fairground toy.

It’s effortlessly won and Lee looks pleased as punch, clinging to the bear, three quarters his height and making it look like there’s a large fluffy bear walking around.

“You’re the best,” Lee purrs.

“Just repaying all the cornettos,” he shrugs.

-

It’s pissing it down with rain and Neville wants to cry: Creevey’s dead and the other officers are still insisting it’s a fucking accident and even Lee’s all tired out, holding the umbrella.

“Don’t take it personally,” Lee implores. “We don’t get murders round here.”

“That’s no excuse for the police to just pretend that murders aren’t happening!” Neville shouts, running a hand through his hair. “People are dying - they’re being killed - and we’re still stuck in the ‘accident’ stage! Can’t you see it’s wrong?”

“These things just don’t happen here!” Lee insists. “I don’t think Theo even knows murder procedure.”

“That’s no excuse!”

“But that’s how this place works, Nev! Deal with it!”

“I will not deal with the blatant incompetence and ignorance of this constabulary!”

Lee sighs. “Come on, man. And I’ve got faith in you.” He shoves the umbrella into Neville’s hand and jogs away across the green, head ducked down, giant teddy tucked under his arm.

-

The bell on the door rings as Neville steps inside, immediately hit by the smell of the happy blooming flowers. He’s not spoken to Miss Sprout much at all, but she’s never seemed anything but kind, with a soft round face and a beaming smile.

“Good morning, Sergeant Longbottom,” she says. “What brings you to this little shop?”

“Oh, I was just wondering if you had any Japanese peace lilies,” he answers; she nods. “For a friend - a close friend.”

“That’s lovely. Flowers are the best gift, I think; it’s just a shame I can’t stay, really.”

“Oh?” Neville frowns. “Why?”

“I’ll be moving away soon - a shame, really, but that’s just how things go, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so.” As Sprout wraps up Neville’s lily carefully, he explores the shop further, admiring the brightly coloured petals and elegant arrangements further back in the shop. It’s nice, he thinks, maybe the only part of the village he really appreciates; if only he weren’t so busy, he’d perhaps keep more plants. He likes them. They seem to understand.

He steps back over to the counter and almost retches with horror: Sprout is dying right in front of him, stabbed in the neck by her shears, and the suspect dressed in black has just dashed by him.

Yelping and using what little activity skills must remain from his years in the Met, he makes chase, but the suspect is unreal: they can run at speed and great length, longer than him, and Neville’s very well-trained.

He runs a hand through his hair. “Oh, bugger.”

-

Lee’s sweet with him, even if the idea of murder still seems to be entirely implausible to the rest of the constabulary, and even when his accusation that it’s Greengrass backfires miserably.

“It’ll be alright, boss,” he says, leaning a head on Neville’s shoulder. “Maybe it was just a collision.”

“Piss off, Jordan,” Neville grumbles. “I know I’m right. There’s just something I’m missing.”

“You’ll get there,” Lee says, patting his back. “You ought to head home, though. Maybe grab some sleep; that always helps me figure out the next level of Sonic.”

“This is real life, not Sonic,” Neville reminds him. “But thanks.”

“No problem, sarge. Call round tomorrow if you’re still feeling rough and we can have a coffee, maybe a pint,  yeah?”

-

Goyle’s on the floor along with the remnants of a shattered peace lily pot and Neville’s chest is heaving; he wants to call Lee, tell him what’s happened, but there’s no time: his head is racing and he knows what’s going on and he doesn’t like it, and though Lee is important, justice comes first.

He grabs his coat, and goes.

He can’t believe the scale of the operation: practically an entire village, conspiring for perfection in the worst way possible, as if it’s attainable, as if there’s something wrong with reality, that people exist and are flawed and that the function of villages are to help them cope with these flaws.

And he - he is just another box on their checklist.

Lee bails him; they’re on the road to London when he pulls over, thumbing over a few twenties as he chews his lip. “Get back to London, yeah? Stay safe. Away from here - just let the town get on.”

“What?” Neville frowns. “You can’t go back, Lee - they’re, you know, murderers!”

“I live there, Nev. It’s my home,” Lee shrugs. “I’m not expecting that you’ll understand, because you’re a city boy. But some of us are tied to our homes.”

“Lee, please,” Neville begs, but Lee is just smiling and walking away, disappearing into the encroaching dark. Neville resists the urge to kick the car, and slides in, slamming the door shut and revving the engine.

-

There’s a charm to action films, and a certain kind of badass dignity one achieves when riding into town on a horse with enough guns strapped to themselves to take down the residents of Ottery St Catchpole three times over.

There’s a charm, too, to leaning down to kiss the person you love while armed to the nines.

-

While Neville infinitely prefers extreme cycling to extreme driving, he’s certainly not averse to either; he is, however, not much a fan of being shot at while trying to drive frantically in pursuit of Crouch and Greengrass.

It’s hard to keep the smile off his face when Crouch inevitably crashes and when Greengrass ends up impaled on the model village spire, and Lee is immediately at his side, elbowing him. “I think she looked better without the new addition,” he says, deadpan until he giggles. “You did a good thing, you know. Old Crouch deserved that broken arm.”

“Oi! Log-arse!” They’re a whole crew, the police force, clambering up the hill and over to the model village, all grinning widely; the twins, Theo, Lavender, the incomprehensible Oliver (Neville thinks even the people in Scotland would struggle to make sense of his drawling accent), and the desk crew, Seamus and Dean. “Look at you go, you London wanker!”

“That’s high praise from you, Fred,” Neville says with a smile. “You guys took care of everything in town?”

“That’s everyone locked up and away, and higher forces called,” Theo confirms.

“And yet you’re all here, with no-one taking care of the cells,” Neville points out, chuckling lightly - it’s not funny, of course, but it’s just so wonderfully typical of the Catchpole Police Service. “We ought to head back, keep an eye out. You guys can decide who the cake’s on this time, and not Lee, because he’s a great shot.” (This is most indubitably a lie.) “Thank you for all your help - even you, Fred, George.”

“No problem, Log-bum,” George says cheerily. “That’s our job. Just make us best men at yours and Lee’s wedding.” Neville rolls his eyes, but smiles over at Lee, linking their hands.

“Have you still got that giant teddy?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Just curious.”

-

“Man, I hate paperwork,” grumbles Fred; not that he’s done much, of course, just a pathetic pile of completed papers.

“At least we’ve got cake!” Lavender beams, offering Fred another slice that he takes gleefully; even Neville takes another slice, between watering the service’s new collection of cactus plants. “This is so much fun. We should do this more often.”

“Just arrest more people,” says Theo.

Neville pauses, cup of water hovering nervously over Oliver Wood Jr., turning slowly to Lee. “Hey, Lee,” he says, “was Moody in the NWA?”

Lee’s eyes widen. “Shit,” he says in substitute of “yes”, and dives for the door to find the nearest weapon; Neville grabs an empty plate as the door to the CCTV room swings open and Mad-Eye Moody steps through, gun in hand.

“Think we were through, did you, Longbottom?” he bellows, and fires.

Lee’s an idiot, and he gets in the way.

-

“Hey,” Lee says, pausing to lean back in through the car window. “Want anything from the shop, love?”

“Just a cornetto,” Neville replies, softly kissing Lee’s lips. “Sarge.”

“Coming up, Inspector.” As Lee heads off, Neville leans out of the car window; he takes a breath of Ottery St Catchpole’s fresh air, and eagerly awaits yet another day of working in a small village.


	6. The Spider (Charlie x Neville)

Charlie opens the door.

He vaguely recognises the man outside as his neighbour, he’s sure – they’ve briefly said hello in the stairwell before – and he quirks an eyebrow, not entirely sure why he’s being graced with a visit until the man, pale-faced and a little sweat-tinged, says “spider”.

“Spider?” Charlie repeats curiously.

“There’s a spider in my living room,” the neighbour says breathlessly. “I’m really scared of spiders – I, um, can you help me? Maybe take it outside? I can’t go back inside, I really need help.”

Charlie bites his lip to stop himself from laughing, but nods; Ron’s terrified of spiders, after all, and when he’s staying over he’s had to remove many a spider from Ron’s room. He can’t really blame his poor neighbour for this; it’s not his fault, and he follows the neighbour through the corridor and to his door. “So, what’s your name, then?”

“Neville,” the man says awkwardly, pushing the door open as slowly as possible and tiptoeing almost comically along the corridor. “You’re, um, Charlie, aren’t you? You have your name on the doorbell.”

“Do I?” Charlie asks, mystified. “I don’t remember putting it there. Oh, well. Point me to the spider and grab me a glass and a piece of paper, could you?” He smiles; Neville’s a little bit cute, in his own way, the way he creeps around the house like a giant spider is going to leap round the corner at him at any moment, the way he keeps looking around like he’s waiting for something to happen as he hands Charlie his spider-busting equipment. “Okay. Here we go.”

Charlie can hear Neville mumble an “oh, God” and shuffle away as he enters the living room, taking it in: it’s nice, really, neatly furnished and full of nice little personal flourishes from anywhere Neville’s been on holiday and a Fourth Doctor scarf draped over the back of his couch and framed art prints that Charlie’s sure he recognises from the local artists’ showcase – in fact, he takes so long just admiring that he almost forgets he’s in to catch a spider until he sees it crawling up the wall: it’s a big one, too, and he can kind of understand why Neville’s scared of this bad boy.

“I see it,” he calls, and in one sleek and well-practised move, traps the spider in the glass and seals it with the paper. “Got it! Blimey, that was easy. Good boy. Or girl. Sorry, spidey.” As he heads for the door, he catches a glimpse of Neville’s television, and pauses for the briefest of moments to remark – “are you watching Monsters Inc? I love that film!” – before hurrying down the stairs and taking a good few metres outside before depositing the spider in the nearest bush with a smile. “Well, bye bye, buddy, and don’t go back to Neville’s house, please?”

He hurries back up the stairs, where Neville is lingering outside his own flat, still looking nervous. “Well?” Neville asks, scratching his arm.

“Deposited a fair ways away,” Charlie says with a smile. “He shouldn’t be bothering you anymore, and if he does come crawling back hell-bent on revenge like a horror movie villain, you know where I am.”

“Thank you so much,” Neville says with a loud and relieved sigh, swinging back comfortably but still a little taut back into the hallway of his flat. “Er – I don’t suppose you’d want to watch the rest of the film with me, do you? I have a bottle of wine, too, as a thank you, if you drink…”

Charlie grins, raising an eyebrow; it’s such a blasé question, but one asked in such a shy manner in some peculiar juxtaposition that seems to be characteristic of Neville. “Sure,” he says. “I’d love to. If you have Monsters University for afterwards, of course.”

Neville smiles, like melted cheese. “Of course!”


	7. A Proposition (Neville x Lee)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have NO idea why this is all in lowercase. i love lowercase, i guess?

“look, um, i’m really sorry, but could you please stop watching porn using my wifi?”

lee is taken aback. firstly, this is britain - someone actually complaining almost never happens - and secondly, he can’t believe he’s being confronted about this by someone who appears to be in equal spades nervous and annoyed. fit, though. good bit of muscle; lee vaguely remembers this guy helping him carry things in when he first moved in, and he’d certainly seemed nice enough then.

lee laughs. “sorry, man. the wifi doesn’t work in here yet and a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do - so use upstairs’ wifi next, yeah?”

“preferably, use mobile data,” the neighbour says tiredly. “i mean… can’t you just… you know… do without?”

“no can do, bud,” lee shrugs. “but don’t worry, man, i’ll just use someone else’s, you know?”

“no!” the neighbour snaps out, surprisingly loud before shrinking away as if surprised by his own power. “crap, i just mean… you shouldn’t really be using someone else’s wifi to do that kind of thing…” he shuffles, and pauses, and looks like he’s building up to something; lee tries not to grin and put him off, but god, this guy’s cute. “maybe next time you could… come over, and…” the neighbour gulps. lee raises an eyebrow.

“are you propositioning me?” he asks, leaning against his doorframe, now widely grinning.

“um, yes,” the neighbour says. “i’m sorry, that was stupid, you’re not interested-”

“i’m very interested,” lee interrupts. “i’ll sure be over with an offer like that.” he laughs, taking a step back into his own flat. “if you’re still up for that, kid.”

“my name’s neville,” the neighbour, who’s clearly not a kid and especially not in comparison to lee and very keen to point out, says. “i’ll, um, see you round?”

“you’ll see me, all right,” lee snorts, and gently shuts the door.

neville probably could’ve asked his neighbour out in a better way, he thinks; but somehow, it worked.


	8. Seventy-Eight (Percy x Regulus)

Sometimes, when wars are over and when depression becomes a permanent bedfellow, bad decisions are made – and sometimes, these decisions are made all too knowingly.

Percy knows exactly what he’s doing; he plans it meticulously, carefully, in the only way he knows how. He reads books and implores librarians to let him into sections past padlocks, and studies; if anyone were to come into his house, which nobody does because they’re afraid of him as if his pain is  _palpable_ , they’d think that he was all but back to normal, drowned in a stack of old books and papers so lengthy that just looking at one could send Ron to sleep.

It’s a cold winter’s day when he finishes his work, and all the windows in the house are shut, the floorboards filled with heating charms. He’s wrapped in a cardigan and a mug of tea is steaming at his desk; all of his books have been returned to the library, leaving no trace of what he’s been doing. No-one will know. No-one  _ought_  to know.

His family will think he’s dead, and probably for the better; he’s been a disappointment for years. He decides to leave a note on his desk, anyway.

 _I made too many mistakes. I’m sorry. I’ve let you all down_.

He thumbs the Time Turner in his hands – it’s such a familiar shape to him now that he could recreate it in his dreams – and smiles vaguely, watching the snow fall outside as he lets it spin through his fingers.

-

The first time Regulus sees Percy, it’s in a wizards’ café tucked just off of a Muggle street; he’s sitting on a table too big for just him and neatly filling in the Daily Prophet crossword. The only seats left in the place are those opposite Percy and, despite himself, Regulus takes a seat in one of them.

“Fifteen across,” he says, “it’s  _title_.”

Percy looks up. “Excuse me?”

“ _Bird with the French name_. The answer is title.”

A smile slowly breaks across Percy’s face, and Regulus thinks that it looks a little bit like the sun rising in the early morning. “So it is,” he says softly, and sketches it into the paper.

-

He takes a part-time job at Flourish and Blotts under the name Thomas Pinch, to be referred to exclusively as “Thomas” and not “Tom”, save he remind anyone of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, narrowly avoiding the Invisible Book of Invisibility scandal by about three days and ending up on the receiving end of much of the manager’s frustrations.

His visit from Regulus is both expected and not; the visits becoming weekly is something he never could’ve anticipated, nor is the way his heart thrums when he sees Regulus coming through the door.

It’s so  _easy_ , in the end. He’d expected a challenge, a fight, and what he has is a boy who visits on Percy’s lunch break to help him with the cryptic crossword.  

“School’s going to start soon,” Regulus says one sunny afternoon; Percy’s halfway up a ladder replenishing their stock of  _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_  in preparation for the season at the time, and simultaneously eating a cheese sandwich. “I won’t be able to come here anymore.”

“You can write,” Percy suggests. “And there are always holidays.”

“I’ll miss you,” Regulus says pointedly, as if Percy is missing some kind of message; the Weasley pauses, glancing down over his shoulder, and Regulus flushes bright red, as if he’s realised what he’s just said. “That is, I, er, enjoy spending time here. It’s… it’s nice, here.”

Percy has to hold in his own laughter as he slots the last book onto the shelf, landing on the floor with a half-reckless leap. “I’ll miss you too,” he says. “But I’m always here.”

Suicidal ideation has never seemed so far away when Regulus blushes.

-

Percy could letter-write the hind legs off a donkey, and Regulus responds keenly in kind; it feels lonelier, true, without Regulus, but he takes a promotion into full-time work and throws himself into the busy schedule of trying to control a bookshop full of magical books; he has moments of wonder when he gets home and Oliver the owl almost claws him in the face in keenness to pass on a letter, and they remind him of what life was like before the war – before the Ministry, even. (He blames bad democracy on his eventual downfall.)

It’s Christmas Eve when he next sees Regulus; Percy’s on the closing shift and the only person in the shop, which is quiet save for panicked last-minute buyers, and he doesn’t look up when he hears the bell ring – he does, however, look up when he hears Regulus awkwardly clearing his throat.

“Oh, hello,” he says, unable to hide his surprise. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be with your family?”

Regulus shrugs. “I’ve spent enough time at their Christmas Eve party; I think I’ve fulfilled my socialisation duties for the day.” He pauses, and swallows. “I wanted to see you.”

Nobody will know, so Percy closes up early.

-

“I think I might die next year,” Regulus says quietly, just before he leaves. Percy looks to the floor.

“You won’t,” he says weakly. “I’m here.”

-

Percy puts a radio in the shop after Christmas, because the silence without Regulus is starting to drive him half-demented; he’s never entirely sure what station to tune in to, and sticks to Radio 1 after an unsuccessful stint with the pirate station Radio Caroline, with the occasional switch to Radio 2 when he’s sick of the same hits over and over.

“ _Baby, oh baby; you look so good to me, baby_ …” He glances up from between the pages of Transfiguration Today as he hears the familiar sound of an owl hitting the window, and with a wince, he pulls it open, letting Regulus’s owl in. “What are you doing here?” He passes a treat from his pocket to the owl as he unfolds the parchment.

_After I graduate, I’d like to move in with you, if you’d have me._

Percy chuckles to himself and glances over at the owl, who’s looking at him expectantly; he quickly writes his answer, shutting the window behind him.

-

Regulus probably isn’t used to the vague squalor of Percy’s flat; it’s tiny, all crammed in, taken over half by unruly piles of books and by neatly folded piles of clothes (Percy doesn’t have enough money to buy furniture – he only barely has enough to pay the rent and buy food, but he functions well enough without) – he’d been given fair warning, but he still looks surprised by it, running his finger over the wireless sitting atop a pile of books (Percy had eventually been made to take it home on the grounds that the customers didn’t much appreciate popular Muggle music).

“You know, as best I did trying to imagine it, I couldn’t really picture you sleeping on the floor,” Regulus says, glancing down at the mattress on the floor.

“As I said, you don’t have to stay with me if you don’t want to,” Percy shrugs. “I’m well aware that I live in a dump, but so long as I can read and sleep, it suits me just fine.”

“No!” Regulus says, startled by his own enthusiasm. “I mean, this place. It’s fine. I want to stay here.”

Percy smiles. “You can have the mattress, then.”

-

Waking up at Percy’s is always an experience: Regulus regularly forgets where he is and squints through the sunlight, stretching out to accidentally bat Percy in the face where they’re squeezed together on the mattress.

“Ow,” Percy grumbles sleepily, reaching up to rub his eyes.

“Sorry,” Regulus says apologetically. “I’m used to… a little more space.”

Percy smiles. “You really don’t have to stay. I’m sure you want more bed space.”

Regulus folds his arms. “I’m going to stay, alright? I’m here for  _you_ , whether you live in a squat or a mansion.”

Percy leans in and kisses his cheek, pulling himself to his feet and stretching out his weary joints. “That’s sweet of you, considering this place really is a squat. Would you like some tea?” Regulus nods. “I’ll make breakfast.”

“I’ll make it,” Regulus offers.

“When I say breakfast,” Percy says, turning round in the doorway, “I really just mean toast. I’ve got it.”

Regulus laughs.

-

Over time, Regulus grows to appreciate the wireless just as much as Percy did at Flourish and Blott’s; he’s alone most of the day while Percy is at work, and while he spends most of his time amusing himself with Percy’s literature stacks, and though he discovers the radio mostly as an accident when he switches it on while he’s making himself lunch, he quickly learns to love it.

He also quickly learns why Percy knows most of the charts, word-for-word.

He’s never had much confidence in being a Death Eater, but it begins to waver, day by day, faster and faster; he learns more and more about what’s really going on, and it turns his stomach. Percy tries to cheer him up, and while he’s glad for it, it doesn’t really work, not when he knows what’s coming.

He makes his decision with all the windows in the flat open and his head out one of them, watching people walk along on the streets below; from wherever the wireless is behind him,  _Teenage Kicks_ is playing, and he whistles along as he tries to swallow his fate.

-

“There’s something I have to do.”

Percy knew what those words meant the minute he heard them, and knew what he had to do; but he’s no better than Regulus alone, and it’s such a hopeless endeavour that it’s more of a suicide attempt. The caves are dark and damp and horrible and his heart aches inside his chest – everything had been going so right, and now reality has come crashing back through.

But he’s doing something useful, for once, and this way it means that Regulus isn’t alone. It’s not a loss at all; it’s something he holds on to in the dark, and when Regulus is screaming so loud the echoes off the walls are deafening.

Regulus is holding onto him when the Inferi come, his grip so tight in his pain, and Percy bumps their foreheads as he scrabbles for his wand, breath coming in unsteady gasps against Regulus’s cheeks. “Regulus?”

“Yes?” he rasps, lifting his face to feel the warmth of Percy’s breath.

“I’m glad I’m with you,” Percy says, and then the Inferi are upon them.


	9. Sugar and Cocoa (Pansy x Neville)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the paneville prompt: "everyone keeps telling me you're the bad guy". chocolate shop au!

There are not many chocolate shops in the world.

There are not many family-run chocolate shops in the world.

There are not many places in the world where two of these family-run chocolate shops coexist on opposite sides of the same street; therefore, of course, they’ve been bitter rivals for the entire time they’ve been open. It’s well-known among locals, for example, that walking into one shop with any obvious sign of the other’s merchandise is an absolute and unforgiveable no-no; tourists get a pass for this, just slightly frosty reception.

Just to make it worse, one is doing better than the other.

Longbottom’s is warm, friendly, full of bright happy colours and cheery murals with an open design, accessible packaging, and is generally more family – leading to, of course, an influx of excitable children whose parents are pleased by Frank and Alice’s kindly demeanours. For those lucky enough to come in on the right weekends, they’ll catch their son Neville working: he’s favoured by the teenage crowd, close enough to his age to appreciate his looks and bachelor status.

The one person who doesn’t appreciate his bachelor status is Pansy Parkinson, but she doesn’t appreciate much: for one, unlike Neville, she  _hates_  her days spent working, and couldn’t care less about the success and reputation of Parkinson’s Chocolaterie (which annoys her, too, because it’s not even a fucking  _word_ ; just something they made up to sound fancy, like they way they use dark and sleek colours and slick packaging just to shove the prices up).

It’s not much of a surprise to him, then, on a quiet Sunday in December when she slinks into Chocomotion; she’s a pretty girl, image-focused, with a black bob and pristinely clean high heels where Neville’s Chucks are battered and scuffed. It’s his job not to be judgmental and to serve customers all the same in a kind and open way, so instead of chasing her out like she would him if he made the mistake of braving her shop, he simply looks up from placing the sign in front of some chocolate orange truffles, smiles politely, and says “hi”.

“Hi,” Pansy replies, leaning on the countertop. “So, you’re the bad guy, huh?”

“I’m not a bad guy,” he says, straightening up. “I just sell chocolates on this side of the street. So do you want some?”

Pansy’s mouth twitches, and she nods, lifting herself up back off the counter. “You guys do hot chocolate, don’t you?” Neville nods. “I’ll have one of those.” He turns around to the microwave at the back of the room, on a makeshift kitchen worktop, and picks up a reasonably-sized David Bowie mug, filling it with milk and placing it in the microwave, tapping the buttons with relative ease. “So, how does it feel being in the more successful job?”

“I just want to make people happy via chocolate,” Neville says insistently, not sure he’s okay with being drilled this relentlessly; he doesn’t want any part of the rivalry, that’s for sure. He’s a part of the business for the same reason his parents are: because he loves chocolate, and enjoys sharing the joy, especially to children with twinkling eyes; while Pansy and her parents are stick thin, Neville is round, with soft chubby features.

“Yeah – well, I’d love that, too, but not in our miserable old shop. The only kind of customers we get are pretentious tosspots and teenagers with too much birthday money who want to feel superior.” She sighs. “You’re meant to be the enemy, but honestly, this place is just so much better.”

“It’s not a  _requirement_  for you to work in your parents’ shop, you know,” Neville remarks, watching the red pixel numbers count down; they have a retro-style microwave in bright red, just like the numbers. It brings the room to life. “Mine told me to only be in the shop if I wanted to be, and I did.”

“Yeah, well, you have  _nice_  parents, don’t you?”

“I mean… that shouldn’t matter, should it?” Neville hides his frown by not turning back and adjusting the collar of his slightly-twisted T-shirt.

“The key word here is  _should_ ,” Pansy points out, and at that point, the microwave beeps and saves Neville. He swings the door open and removes a particularly heated Bowie, undoing the wrapping on a large cube of chocolate skewered with a kebab stick to dunk it into the cup. “Fuck, that looks good. No wonder you guys are doing us out of business.”

“Just a bit of inventiveness and the family touch,” he says, sounding lighter again as he passes the mug over to Pansy. “You’re okay with staying in here to drink that, right? I’m sorry, I was assuming, I shouldn’t have assumed…”

She waves a hand. “It’s fine. I’m staying. This place is way better.” She stirs it in, and Neville holds his smile back: she’s stirring with excited vigour, the way everyone does their first time, the way he still does when he’s having a good time. “I mean, eating chocolate isn’t clinical or professional. It’s fucking  _chocolate_ , isn’t it? A big ball of sugar and cocoa. Renowned period cramp cure, bringer of happiness, break-up staple. There’s nothing fancy about it, and you guys just  _get_  that.”

“Here for a reason?” Neville asks, carefully, like he might be treading on thin ice, but Pansy doesn’t care.

“Maybe,” she says. “Who wants to know?”

Neville shrugs. “Someone who’s curious.”

She sets down the mug as she continues stirring, watching the milk change colour and wondering how they afford milk over water; it would be easier, after all, to flip a switch on a kettle and use that, but milk is always better. Substantial. “Well,” she says. “It’s a long story.”

His eyes flick to the clock on the wall, adorned with an image of Chuck Berry. “I’ve got plenty of time for it,” he says, and with a smile, Pansy takes a sip of her hot chocolate.


	10. A-Levels (Neville x George)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> good ol' high school au

Neville hates exams almost as much as he hates being knocked over by Crabbe and Goyle in the corridor; the fear that swells in his chest is just uncontrollable, and trying to study fills him with nerves, turning the words on the page into an incomprehensible blur of size-twelve printed Calibri among pages of unreadably complicated text. 

He barely made it through his GCSEs (with a surprisingly good sent of results, in the end), but he thinks that, truly, his A-levels are going to kill him. He’s never felt so terrified in his life, even after years of being terrorised by Mr Snape, and though he wants to go home and study in peace, he knows he’ll get nothing done at school: and so he continues on, lumbering through his textbooks and jotters, wondering how the hell he managed this the last time.

“I don’t know, Neville,” George says at the bottom of the grounds; they’re sitting on the bench by the pond, situated just in front of the dirt path which is beaten by the muddy footprints of many a procrastinating or thoughtful student seeking some sort of break or time alone. “I think the trick is just trying to not worry - notice that, for you, I say  _trying_  to not worry, because I know that you’d find it pretty difficult.”

“That’s still a pretty big try,” Neville argues. “Shouldn’t I be worried? I mean - this is the difference between college and a lifetime of bad employment, isn’t it?”

“Not necessarily,” George shrugs, pulling his legs up to cross them on the bench, his right knee pressing against Neville’s lap. Neville shudders. “This is something that’s been fed to you, by the education system - and, of course, your gran, who’s just mental, Nev, you know that - but you know what else has been fed to us by the education system?”

“Well, hopefully I’d know, since that’s the point of education,” Neville says, so surprisingly astute that George pauses to laugh for a moment (“I’m teaching you well, aren’t I, love?”).

“The education system fed to us that, number one, being gay was some kind of cardinal sin - and, if this is a sin, fuck the virtues, am I right? And, number two, gay sex was… oh, God, what did he say?”

“Wasn’t it something about hellfire?”

George grins. “Feeling the burn, Nev?”

Neville looks away, going red. “N-no. Not at all. I just remembered because it was stupid.”

“ _Phenomenally_ stupid.” George reaches over a hand, running it through Neville’s thick dark hair and mussing it at the top with a fond smile. “See? You can not worry about exams, for a bit. You just have to take this not worrying - like, come on, you  _definitely_  weren’t worried about the hellfire - and apply it to your exams.”

“Where’s the try?” Neville asks, almost awkwardly; he feels a little like he’s dependent on it, like he needs it in the sentence. George shrugs.

“I think I have a bit more faith in you than you do,” he says. “Come on, Nev. You got great results last year. You can do it.” He leans in to kiss Neville’s cheek, and it’s less of a miss than a purposeful slip that takes him through to Neville’s lips for a moment of surprising tenderness before he leaps to his feet. “Right, procrastinator! We’re going back inside!”

“Already?” Neville asks with a sigh, pulling his jacket back on.

“Yes, already. But you know what we can do? We can make  _posters_. With Sharpies, and colour, and blackjack, and hookers.”

“I don’t want hookers,” Neville says, quietly, “I want you.”

“I know the library has an amazing secret romance novel section, but I think you oughta let up on it, Nev.” George feels his stomach flutter again anyway, reaching out his hand to take Neville’s, knowing all too well they’ll have to detach halfway back up the path, where the teachers look down from the school like Stormtroopers; still, he’s got it, and it’s what matters to him - even if what should matter is how well he manages these A-levels.


	11. Neville, and Lush Bath Bombs (Neville x Lee)

Neville’s got kind of a cold house; the floorboards are chilly to bare feet, which is exactly the way he prefers to walk, consciously feeling them under his chubby toes when he wanders along to the kitchen to make up a cup of hot chocolate in his mother’s old Cookie Monster mug or a cup of tea in a mug from his visit to Baltimore. 

Lee isn’t so much used to it, and yelps slightly when he leaves the safe carpeting of Neville’s room; not only does it have its own carpeting, but the layers of Neville’s folded-up clothes that don’t have enough wardrobe space in his child-sized closet. He hadn’t meant to wake Neville, but his boyfriend stirs anyway, stretching out, fists bumping his bedstead as he groans, never used to the morning haze.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Lee says lightly. 

“It’s okay,” Neville mumbles, wiping his eyes as he sits up; he wears a pair of cotton shorts and either a varsity hoodie or slightly too-big graphic T-shirt from Redbubble to bed, and Lee’s pretty smitten with the way he looks, all fluffy hair and round corners - though Lee would be smitten any which way Neville came. “I should make some breakfast and get ready for school.” 

“I should make breakfast,” Lee argues, scratching at his midriff; he has a gathering of dark hair there and Neville struggles not to look. “Since I crashed here. Unexpectedly.” 

Neville blushes. “Only cus  _I_  needed you here, so I’ll make it.” This is fine by Lee, in the end; he’s a disaster in the kitchen, whereas Neville treats it like a waltz: he’s dressed and wearing his Vans by the time he gets round to it so that he doesn’t slip on the tiles, spreading a hearty layer of raspberry jam over Lee’s toast. “I’m really sorry about yesterday…”

“Don’t be,” Lee shrugs. “If you’re upset - I mean, that’s what I’m here for. That, and cracking great tunes.” He leans in to nip a kiss at Neville’s jaw. “On a scale of one to Miss Trunchbull, how much is your Gran gonna kill you when I’m gone?”

“She’s just going to do the judgmental look all day,” Neville reckons; Lee finishes making his coffee by adding a touch of milk, adding a little and some sugar to Neville’s mug of tea. 

“You have such an organised breakfast,” Lee marvels. “Mostly at home we just pour cereal and try and shovel it before we have to go to school, which is why it helps that I can drive. Not that the school like me parking a truck, but they can get fucked; I’ll park wherever I damn want to.” Neville lets out a giggle - he’s been thoroughly enjoying watching the interesting unravelling of Lee’s Pickup Truck At School Chronicles, after all - and grabs a plate for the toast and one for his scone, which he butters lovingly before he even sits down.

“I feel sick if I don’t eat in the morning,” he says, finally taking a seat on one of the stools in the kitchen, a gleaning marble modern marvel of modern architecture and his Gran’s bulging wallet. He’s got a cheese scone, slightly dry because it’s yesterday’s, but it’s buttered to the hilt and scatters crumbs when he takes a bite. He switches on the television, too, quietly, his eyes scanning the marquee headlines.

“Where’s your Gran?” Lee asks.

“She’s never up before I go to school. She likes to sleep.” 

“So - you’re alone in the morning?” Lee pauses for a moment, seeming to reel in what Neville’s never noticed so much before. “Fuck, Nev, I’ll drive over here to eat toast with you every morning if you want.” 

Neville flushes all red - “no! I’m fine, I’m fine, I really am, yesterday was just a one-off, I wasn’t feeling too good…” - and he tilts his head away from Lee, dark hair curtaining his eyes. 

“I’m your boyfriend, Nev. I want you to be able to rely on me, and I’m pretty sure I’ve twigged that you don’t like having to rely on me so much, but if that’s what you need, that’s what I’m here for, alright? Maybe later we can work on building you up for a little more independence if that’s what you want, but right now - just let me help you?” Lee reaches over, and their hands graze. “And if that means some more awesome sleepovers, so be it.”

“Okay,” Neville mumbles, taking another bite of scone before resting his head on Lee’s shoulder; he’s never felt as comfortable as he does tucked into all Lee’s nooks and crannies, and he’d spend the whole day just wrapped around Lee like a wiry cat if he could (though, of course, a cat with a rather fluffy belly). “I’m sorry; I just wish I could - be me, but…”

“If you’re not there, you’re not there. It’s okay to have not okay days. We can deal with these.” Lee kisses into the top of Neville’s head; his hair smells of the shampoo he used yesterday, fruity and floral. “Mm. You smell like… a Lush store.”

Neville giggles. “I’ve still got some bath bombs.”

“If it weren’t so damn gay, I’d say we should have a bath together,” Lee says, and Neville lets the irony of the statement past because he’s sure it’s intended; Lee usually doesn’t say something he doesn’t mean or has subconsciously thought through like a new-budded Tennessee Williams. 

“Maybe,” Neville says slowly, trying to avoid the swirl of thoughts in his own head, “we should.” 

Lee bursts into laughter, the way that Neville loves it, and their fingers loop, warm and slightly nervous because they’ve got no idea what this is, the way their stomachs jump and brim with fireworks - it’s so new, fresh, and wonderful; and, honestly, Neville sometimes wishes he didn’t need Lee like a crutch, but sometimes, Lee’s just all he wants.


	12. Retrograde (Fred x Draco)

Draco notices about two months into living with Fred and George that Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes never has an off-season: even when the summer subsides and Hogwarts students have long since anointed the halls with their presence, they still have a steady stream of customers each day, from bored Ministry workers to parents and children just too young for Hogwarts yet, and of course, Bill Weasley himself. He can hear the chaos through the gently creaking floorboards during the day: the living room is over the till, and he can hear the clamour when he’s reading.

He decides to take a venture down one day, bored of his aimless studying (he could, he supposes, try and enter into a wizarding university, but the nearest one is in Slovenia and he’s not sure he’s ready for life on his own); it’s lunchtime, and the shop is heaving, George wolfing down Muggle snack bars behind the counter as Fred serves, flanked on his right by one of the shop assistants. It’s sheer and complete chaos, the floor flooded with customers all poking and prodding at everything on the shelves.

“Hey, Draco,” George says through an inelegant spitting mouthful. “What brings you down ‘ere?” (It’s more of an incomprehensible mess, but Draco gets the gist.)

“I just came to look. It seems busy.”

“We’re a successful business enterprise; we’re always busy.” George swallows, finally, and clears his throat. “We’re thinking of expanding, actually. The unit next door’s empty, so if we hired some extra staff, it might be easier.”

“You’d have no shortage of applicants,” Draco notes, tilting his head at the throngs of people; George snorts.

“Nah,” he says, “we wouldn’t.”

-

The talks for expansion are nothing more afterwards than Draco’s whisper into Fred’s ear, tangled in the sheets, a few nights later: the unit is rented, and for some gut-wrenching weeks, the main shop’s opening hours are skimmed as decorating begins.

The first step of decorating isn’t so much practical work as inspiration and collection: Fred and Draco head to the Malfoy country house, still as gloriously retro as Fred had left it a year prior, and take warm-toned Polaroids that hum with life and energy.

“I’ll miss it,” Draco says softly as Fred lifts his wand to an orange and brown houndstooth wallpaper. “It felt like… a presence of its own. Something comforting, as stupid as it sounds.”

“Doesn’t sound stupid at all,” Fred shrugs. “I mean, it’s just me. In wallpaper form.”

“Now that does sound stupid.” Draco clicks his tongue, watching as Fred conducts the wallpaper into curling away into a neat roll, like a poster. “Are we taking the record player?”

“Of course we are. It’s like a family member. Record Player Weasley, who’s just above Percy in my heart.” He peels the last of the wallpaper away, leaving the off-white of the wall underneath, stark and dull, the way it had always been. “You can get it, then, if you’re so keen.”

Draco sighs, never one to be satisfied with menial labour. “Fine.”

It takes them about half a day to undo and pack away all of Fred’s various alterations: he was thorough, imaginative, and vaguely reminiscent of an acid trip gone interestingly wrong, and lots of things are hidden away in nooks and crannies and hung from ceilings and enchanted so thoroughly that undoing them is almost an art, a careful tracing of wand patterns; Draco would never have thought Fred capable of the elegance with which he undoes some of his spells, but he does it with practised ease, taking down what had been Draco’s refuge and returning it to a soulless masterpiece.

Fred doesn’t want to interfere with the record player, since it’s one of the few things that works even in the presence of magic, so he carries it by hand: as he hefts it up, Draco taking the speakers, he notes that, unlike most things in the house, there’s not a speck of dust on it.

-

“I’m on my way from misery to happiness today - ah hah, ah-hah, ah-hah, ah-hah…” The extension looks good almost the minute they start working on it: Fred wallpapers immediately, bringing the room into full vintage glory, and George gets in help to install shelving and work the layout of the room, adding hammocks to the corners to put in their new Pygmy Puff plushes (for when you can’t be bothered taking charge of a life, Draco supposes). For all it’s worth, he sits in a corner eating sandwiches, changing the record, reading, and watching.

Fred, of course, sings along to every record, and unwittingly Draco has unleashed a musical monster in placing Sunshine on Leith under the needle.

“I took the road that brought me to your home town, I took the bus to streets that I could walk down…” He stuffs his wand in his pocket, smiling at his extravagantly seventies wallpaper. “Hey, Draco, can I have a sandwich?”

“Piss off. You make your own, you can have your own,” Draco says grumpily; Fred snorts, rolling his eyes.

“Slytherins.” He takes a seat next to Draco anyway: he takes the floor, Draco elevated on a particularly uncomfortable wooden chair. “You sure you want to be here? I mean, I know it’s not exactly your cup of tea…”

“I don’t really want to be here right now, but - fuck, this sounds like utter bollocks, but I want to be with you.” Fred nods, standing to run a hand through Draco’s hair; it looks strangely yellow in the bulb light. “Just…”

“Nah,” Fred interrupts. “I get it.” He’s been almost everything Draco has, aside from his family; he had become Draco’s escape, appearing at strange intervals at the summer house through holidays, and somewhere along the line, he had started brushing the hair out of Draco’s face and started kissing him and it had been unstoppable, a force of its own. Draco’s attachments are no surprise. “You can go home, though. You don’t have to sit here.”

“No,” Draco says stubbornly. “I will.”

Fred laughs.

-

The night before the grand opening is an odd one: George is out on a date, leaving just Fred, Draco, and a skipping twelve inch of the Twin Peaks soundtrack (sadly, most of it is instrumental and starving Fred of his traditional sing-along), leaving him quiet as he nurses a sickly Pygmy Puff with a bottle.

“Runt of the litter,” he says softly, his fingers brushing through its soft fur. “Maybe we should keep her.”

Draco raises his eyebrows. “And lose out on a sale?”

“We make enough money to never sell any of these cuties and be fine,” Fred replies, tilting the bottle to encourage the giant ball of pink fluff. “You want to feed her for a bit?” Draco shakes his head, but doesn’t hesitate to rest it against Fred’s shoulder, watching numbly. “I’m glad you’re here,” says Fred, so quietly Draco’s not sure it’s even happened, his eyes still fixated on the lightly purring (if that’s the word for the little squeaking sound she makes) Puff.

“I’m glad I’m here too,” he says, just as softly.

-

The extension is taken well by customers: it draws plenty of lunch-break Ministry workers and parents with young children, and the occasional skipping older Hogwarts student. Draco never really ventures into the shop, but he spends the whole day sitting in a levitating chair, on record player duty, sifting through Fred and George’s requests (while always pettily putting Fred’s first). He’s mostly left be, given the occasional side glare; he doesn’t mind, because he’d give himself a side glare if he knew what was going on anymore inside his head, inside his heart.

He’s interrupted from his thoughts by a curious-looking boy of about eight with an accent that sounds both French and German all at once. “Who are you?” the boy asks curiously, blinking up at him with the childlike awe Draco’s fairly sure he doesn’t deserve.

“I don’t know,” Draco says: because he’s halfway up a shelf in Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes, gloriously indebted to Fred Weasley, with no idea how any of it really happened, just that he’s arrived like a speeding car.


	13. Doorframes (Charlie x Rolf x Neville)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> stephen king's "it" au, featuring a triad pairing!

there’s a small town in rural america that sits in the middle of wandering dry green bushes, with yawning old houses snatched straight from the 1980s; rolf’s been here for months, already, in the middle of some photography project that marries nicely with his gap year, and he’s just finished developing some particularly interesting black and white prints when he hears the rumble of the only bus that serves town.

“charlie,” he breathes, setting down a landscape of the sign that serves town, taken sprawled out on the roof of his subaru; he grabs his boots, tying the laces using an easy-tie method that takes him just seconds, and dashes for the door, flinging it open. 

his eyes light up with surprise: he’d only been expecting charlie, just as much a globetrotter as he is, but standing behind him, awkwardly clinging white-knuckled to his suitcase, is neville; it’s been a long time since rolf last saw neville, far too long, and he looks different - he’s not quite as happily chubby, a little thinner, more drawn, english pale; but travelling is always a weary thing, and so rolf leaves it by, placing his arms up around neville and squeezing him. “hey,” he says warmly, “it’s been a while.”

“yeah,” neville says into rolf’s shoulder; it smells the way that rolf does, sharp and tangy but earthy, like he’s been rolling around in mud somewhere (and god knows, he probably has). “i wanted to see you, and since charlie was coming, well…” 

“i’m glad you’re here,” rolf nods, leading neville through the door and into his house - well, it’s more of a shack, really: he took up an old abandoned house and only converted a few of the rooms into living spaces, leaving rooms full of sprawling ivy and branches and wildcats scattering across the floor. “i’m so sorry, neville; i’m sure charlie will recognise this mess, but i’m aware this looks slightly like i’m living in squalor…”

“you  _are_ living in squalor,” charlie reminds him with a beaming smile, laughing and elbowing rolf. “travelling entails squalor, unless you’re rich and or glamping.” 

“i don’t get glamping,” rolf complains, “it really defeats the purpose of camping in the first place; it’s meant to be a raw, beaten, outdoor experience without the usual luxuries…” he goes on for longer than neville listens; he’s not so bothered by the mess and inhabitable rooms, but he feels far away from the world that charlie and rolf live in: he feels like he’s been jerked unknowingly from his body, and is watching from above. it reminds him of puberty; it’s so close he still remembers the feeling, but he’s not sure why it’s back, returning in a crashing wave.

“neville,” charlie says, starting neville as he places a hand on the younger’s arm. “you okay?” 

“uh-huh,” neville says. “sorry. i was miles away,” and he leans into charlie, feeling the rise and fall of his chest; charlie breathes like he means it, deep from his stomach. neville doesn’t think he’ll ever do anything as well as charlie just breathes, and he bunches his hand in the cotton of charlie’s shirt. “it was a long flight.”

“yeah, it was.” charlie musses neville’s hair affectionately. “rolf, baby, is there a takeaway round here? we could get some food and get neville somewhere to sleep.” 

“pizza place round the corner,” rolf nods, grabbing his wallet out of his jacket pocket; it’s barely even a jacket, a thin sports jacket that’s more for aesthetic than anything else. “i’ve got a darkroom through that door over there, nev, so can you stay out of it?” neville nods. “thanks. we’ll be back in a bit.”

“okay,” neville says, and he watches them leave hand-in-hand, masking his smile; he loves them both and finds them sweet as sugar. 

when the door shuts, he decides to have a cursory look-round: it’s a two-floor house, but there are stairs missing and they creak with nobody stepping on them, and so neville avoids the dusty spiral; he runs his hands along the walls - there’s peeling wallpapers in the inhospitable rooms, but rolf has ripped them off in the four rooms he occupies and painted them a friendly golden yellow instead: but he’s rolf, and so hasn’t done it particularly brilliantly, with spots missed and some painted messily, signs of humanity - though without rolf, it’s strange and empty. 

neville settles himself on the mattress in rolf’s bedroom; there’s another one stacked up against the wall, for him and charlie. it’s a little small, but neville doesn’t mind, and he curls up on rolf’s mattress with a soft sigh, stomach growling.

he starts as he hears a clattering from the kitchen; he shoots up from the bed and edges through, feeling his chest constrict as he walks, hand on the wall like a lifeline, brushing the paint. “hello?” he calls weakly. “rolf? charlie?”

silence. the stairs groan dying breaths.

he keeps on walking, each footfall agonising, the result only of stupid bravery - fuck, he’d never walk if he wasn’t such an idiot, but he pushes forward, trying to ignore the feeling of whispering around him, the feeling of eyes piercing right through them, or looking right into him. _it’s probably a cat, or something,_  he reckons with himself. his heart is hammering so hard it hurts; he wants charlie back. 

“ _hey, neville, wanna play_?” 

oh, fuck. 

draco malfoy is sneering at him in the doorway to an empty room; but he’s not draco, he’s  _contorted_ ,  _twisted_ in the way that neville always sees him in his mind’s eye - tall and lanky with black eyes, an other mother version of him, leering, his teeth there and then razor sharp and then gone in untimely flickers that chill neville through to the bone, that loosen his bladder and slam him against the wall. he wants to scream. he doesn’t. he wants to scream. he wants to scream, he is terrified, his trouser leg is wet with his own piss and-

“ _you’re so pathetic, longbottom. what a fucking loser, piss poor and so fucking fat; like a cow!_ ” the draco-creature crows in a voice that sounds like gravel and screeching and children crying, and neville flattens himself to the wall, his face losing its colour; he thinks he might leave his body, paralysed, rigid. fuck, fuck, fuck, he’s so scared, watching as draco’s head spins and rotates, growing redder and redder and his smile widening with blood that drips from either end, glaswegian, as draco’s face smears itself with white paint, encroaching on neville finally as a clown, so tall and huge he feels tiny in comparison as it leans in. “ _piss pants longbottom! piss pants longbottom! age eighteen and you can’t even control yourself! you’re a weak boy, aren’t you? are you scared? are you scared?_ ” 

 _yes_ , neville is scared; because he’s taken a plane halfway across the globe and he’s never alone, clowns over his shoulder at every avenue, and no matter where he goes, it’s  _there_ , waiting: and with a final burst of energy, he sprints outside with a bellowing scream, the clown hot on his heels as it smashes through rolf’s sitting room, dispelling itself as neville flings himself through the front door and tumbles down the steps of the porch, slamming into the concrete ground with some force, his nose bursting with sticky red blood. 

“ _go on and pee yourself again_ ,” the voice cackles right in neville’s ear and he just  _screams_ , flinging himself into a ball, arms pulled tight over his head and face, muscles pulled taut, his mind only producing one sentence over and over like a frantically broken record:

_i am afraid_

he almost doesn’t notice when charlie and rolf arrive, dropping the pizzas to the ground to wrap arms around him and stroke through his hair. “neville,” charlie says softly, “neville, i’m right here, okay, love?”

“what happened?” rolf demands - but not harshly, with desperation, thrown, confused. “are you okay? oh, god, nev…” 

neville slowly withdraws his head from his arms, the lower half of his face beginning to crack with drying blood; rolf’s eyes widen, and charlie looks at him with the kind of sympathy neville doesn’t need: it’s the sympathy of someone who believes he’s going slowly insane, and though charlie loves him through it anyway, he just wants someone to  _believe_. 

“is it happening again?” charlie asks, his fingers grazing the back of neville’s hair. 

“everywhere,” neville whispers, “it’s everywhere.” 

it takes a fair amount of coaxing to return him to rolf’s house; he’s wrapped with a blanket and placed on the spare mattress after taking a bath to wash the urine from his legs. rolf tidies his room, and takes a moment of silence in his darkroom, running a hand through his hair and sighing softly, perplexed. 

he glances through his developed photographs, pausing for a moment; he doesn’t recognise one in the center of the pile, one of his own house just post his own moving in because it’s surprisingly neat on the inside, and the outside of the house still littered with removed furniture; but on the inside of the house is a figure that he doesn’t recognise, and upon closer inspection, he spies red on the person’s face, hidden in the shadow of the doorway. 

he tucks the photograph away, and, with a slight shudder, returns through to neville; when neville looks up, he understands the expression, and they join their hands slowly, fingers winding together. 

“yeah?” neville implores.

“yeah,” rolf replies, and sits down slowly. 


	14. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (Pansy x Neville)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt "it’s not that you’re wrong, exactly, you’re just extremely not right"; phone psychic au

Neville’s fingers twitch where they hover over the keypad; he can never keep himself still, hallucinating flashes of bright orange light - someone always needs him, and he rarely catches a moment between calls. He eyes the cupcake on his left, the last of his weekend batch.

The button blinks.

He sighs, and presses it. “Hello, Divination Service; how can I help you?” 

“You got it wrong,” the voice says; it sounds clipped, like Neville’s primary school teacher who spoke with her lips tightly puckered in. He blinks, pausing - he’s never had this type of call, and that’s because he’s never wrong; he didn’t get into the Divination Service not being able to tell the four of swords from The Magician, that’s for sure. “Well - it’s not that you’re  _wrong_ , exactly, you’re just extremely  _not right_.” 

“I’m sorry, pardon?” he asks politely, reaching over and unravelling the cupcake (he reckons that he needs it for this call). “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

The voice on the other end of the line lets out an exasperated sigh that Neville deems extremely unnecessary. “You told me that I would fall in love with a boy, which I thought was absolute tosh-” 

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” he interrupts, never one to enjoy having his minimal belief in his own abilities diminished. 

“-but it wasn’t. It was just- it was a dog. I got a dog. He’s called Blaise, after my shitty friend. I mean, I don’t know to what level of  _wrong_  this constitutes, but surely this is false advertising, because you were making it clear to me that I would fall in love with a boy as if I would fall in love with a human boy, but here I am with a sausage dog.” Neville’s sure he can actually hear the sausage dog letting out a series of little barks, and he takes a bite of icing-infested cupcake; it’s a little dry, now, but it’s still good. He likes baking - it mostly results in disasters and having to wave a cloth at his smoke alarm, but when it works, it means that he has a fresh batch of warm cupcakes to eat. “Are you going to apologise?”

He scratches at the slight growth of hair by the side of his face. “I wasn’t wrong, though, was I? You did fall in love, with a boy. And I don’t think I was leading you on, because I never specified that the boy was a human boy.”

“What other kind of fucking boy  _would_  it be? I wasn’t expecting a dog!” 

Neville  _does_ feel bad - it wasn’t, of course, clear to him either, otherwise he might’ve mentioned that the aforementioned budding relationship would be that of a dog and his owner, but the call just seems funny to him. He smiles into his mouthpiece. “Okay. I’m really sorry that I misled you, but I hope you’re happy with little Blaise.”

“Yeah,” the voice says, almost quietly, now, “he’s pretty cute. I have him wrapped up in a blanket so he looks a bit like a burrito.” 

Neville coos, too, softened by the mental image. “He sounds like a good guy to be the love of your life, huh? Better than any human boy.” He sinks his teeth into more chocolate sponge, dusting it off with some hundreds and thousands tucked into the mixture. 

“I guess, but I would’ve  _appreciated_  the heads-up. Or a human boy. It was kinda what I was angling for, being a teenage girl and all. How old are you?”

“Nineteen. This is funding my botany degree,” he says with a smile; he’s nothing to most people but a voice, a conduit between them and their future. He talks and he sees and he delivers and then they hang up and leave him be, knowing nothing more of him than his accent. “You’re a teenager too, huh?”

“Same age,” she says, with a noise that Neville has come to recognise as a nod. He wonders what she looks like; she has a pretty voice, with alto tones, and what sounds like a particularly regal accent. “I’m doing a degree in English lit. But I’m not feeling good about it - I’m struggling, a bit, which is why I called…”

“Look, since you’re burning up money calling me, do you want me to tell you if I see anything?” he asks; he can feel something bubbling at the corner of his mind, something that wants to be told. 

“Yeah, please.” Her voice is weak; her face is probably stony, but Neville knows how to read the way someone speaks, and he can tell that she’s upset. It’s the degree. He  _knows_  it’s the degree - he’s seen so many people around him start to crack, and he worries, poking into their futures and trying desperately to find the happiness, the two-one, the first. 

But for her, he tells her what he sees exactly, and doesn’t implore the future to try and scribe what isn’t real. “It’s not going to be sunshine and rainbows on the degree front,” he says frankly, “but you’re going to work hard. I can see your university library really clearly -  _oh_ , you must go to the same one as I do! I recognise the library. I can see it, and you’re going to work hard, and you’re going to have help from some friends, maybe other people in your course and in your tutorials - and I can feel that you’re going to be happy in other aspects of life and yourself, despite the whole degree course. Things are looking up for you, I think.”

“You’re lying.”

“I really wouldn’t, knowing that you call back if I’m wrong,” he says with a chuckle, and he hears her laugh, too. “You maybe should hang up, you know. For a student budget, these lines are expensive. I don’t want you to have to eat Pot Noodle on my behalf.”

“I don’t know. People say that, but I  _love_ Pot Noodle.” He can hear the dog again, closer this time. “Okay. I’ll hang up when you tell me what your name is, and when you get off from work, and what your future is.”

Neville’s cheeks flush. “How about your name, first?”

She doesn’t hesitate. “Pansy.” 

“Oh, that’s pretty. I like pansies,” he says, before he can stop himself, and gently lowers his forehead onto his desk, feeling idiotic. “I’m Neville, my future is happiness, and I get off from work at four.” 

“Well,” says Pansy, “I’ll see you then,” and she hangs up. 


	15. Othar (Charlie x Neville x Rolf x Luna)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's a quartet ship! final fantasy-esque au

Neville’s never seen a sight before like the Gulf: it’s huge, swallowing up the vast nothingness of the cracking desert that surrounds it, full of lush green cactuses with man-sized spikes and groaning beasts with scaled skin that he can barely see through the occasional wallowing cloud; and even though it’s nothing, really, just plain ground that goes on for miles and miles, he’s hypnotised by it – it’s beautiful in that foreign way, the way that it’s so incredibly  _new_.

“First time seeing the Gulf, huh?” Charlie grins, resting his elbows on the side of the ship, his flyaway hairs wild in the wind that rushes by them. “I love it here. Rolf thinks it’s too barren to be much fun, but I grew up on dragons and wyverns, and one of these days, I wonder if I’ll see one out here. But mostly it’s just the old one-eyed fliers that come too close, so watch yourself.”

“I  _am_  trained,” Neville objects – though he doesn’t feel like it, not anymore; his Academy robes are too heavy for the warmth of this part of the world, and he’s been wearing a half-unbuttoned thin cotton shirt and shorts since he realised that, magic student or stowaway or captain or hearty chef, everybody’s equal on Charlie’s airship.

“And I could fend off pirates one-handed in my sleep, but those fliers are still buggers and they bite  _hard_ ,” Charlie says, reaching over to ruffle Neville’s dark hair. “Just trying to look out for you. Give me a shout if one of the eagles tries to snatch you away.”

“Hey,” Neville says, a look of sheer terror flashing for a moment in his eyes; Charlie sighs softly, his hand falling from Neville’s hair to the back of his neck, reassuring. “They – they won’t, will they?”

“No,” he says, laughing. “They’re far too small for that. I’m just joking. Sorry.”

Neville’s been on the ship too long to feel offended by anybody trying to scare him – it’s their idea of  _fun_ , of  _bonding_ , of inducting him as a new member, and so he just resists the urge to roll his eyes, resting his head on Charlie’s shoulder; Charlie, despite the muscles and the beard and the rough laugh and the knuckledusters, is a man for tenderness, for hugs and knees bumping and people sleeping in his lap. “Is the rest of the world like this?” Neville asks, his eyes twinkling; he’s never left his hometown, never mind the country – never seen the beauty of the singing lights in the Ascorian skies, the majesty of the neverending cities in Chie-Skua, never had coffee in the depths of a forest in a town made of wooden platforms. “This beautiful. It… it just makes me want to not to finish learning. I want to… I want to see it all.”

“Othor’s pretty, too, you know,” Charlie shrugs, the pads of his fingers dusting the collar of Neville’s shirt. “I’ve been there plenty times, and I still haven’t seen a damn thing in that city. It’s practically the size of the countries over where you live.”

Neville is quiet, watching the sky, a curtain of blue.

“You can do what you want,” says Charlie, “but you’ve always got the time to see the world.”

-

The ship ports for a day at the aerodrome in Catoosa, and Rolf invites Neville and Luna to join him on one of his many wanderings: this time, to see a friend. On the ship he’s always dressed in a way that makes Neville’s throat catch, in a half-unbuttoned cotton shirt and trousers held up with suspenders, his messy brown hair mussed in the breeze – but when they’re in town, he wears huge overalls and heeled boots, his pockets tucked with various weapons, bells, and foodstuffs and his straps affixed with various badges proclaiming him to be members of countless organisations from across the world.

He catches Neville’s stare, and grins.

“Where are we going?” Luna asks – seemingly ignoring the blistering heat of the Western sun, she’s wearing her Academy robes, the last relics of their significantly colder home, and she sticks out like a sore thumb in the city: her hair is pulled up and pinned to her head in a variety of braids, whereas the local girls let their hair hang loose round their shoulders. Neville doesn’t know whether or not he really does aesthetically prefer Luna’s braids or just likes them from familiarity.

“Charlie is doing some business deals, so I thought I’d visit an old friend,” Rolf says, cheerily, the flare of his three-quarter trousers blowing in the breeze. “He used to be a mercenary – good, too good, retired early with enough money to keep himself afloat, and now he lives out here with one of  _his_  friends. He’s seen a lot of the world, too – Charlie said you were thinking about travelling, so I thought he might be able to help you.  _And_  he keeps Kneazles.”

“Does he live nearby? There are lots of Nargles here,” Luna remarks; she sounds like wind chimes to Neville, which confuses him a lot.

“Nargles, huh? Never heard of them. You’ll have to point them out to me sometime. This way.” He veers on a sharp left, pausing for a moment to reach out instinctively for Neville – his hand stops in the air before floating back down to his side. “You okay, Neville?”

Neville is not okay,  _actually_. He thinks Rolf is attractive, and he likes the way Rolf smiles, and he would gladly give up his next two years at the Academy just to keep travelling with Rolf. The worst part is – he doesn’t even know  _why_.

“Uh-huh,” he nods. Rolf looks at him through floppy hair, and a moment passes this way.

-

It’s not Viktor’s job to convince Neville to stay at the Academy; and thus, he fails.

-

Rolf does it better.

He’s waiting when Neville knocks on the door, one of the straps of his overalls undone from where he’d had it safety pinned shut for good measure, and his eyes twinkle a little. “What’s up?” he asks, stepping aside to let Neville in to his little menagerie before squeezing the door shut behind them.

“I feel homesick,” Neville says softly, and when he leans forward and rests his head on Rolf’s shoulder, Rolf’s arms reach up to catch him; they can feel each other’s breath warm on their skin, and it’s like nothing Neville has felt before: this closeness, tenderness, an intermingling of their senses and experiences. Nothing this far away ever feels like home, the frigid cold of Gidi, but Rolf is the closest thing he’s felt to it: Rolf feels the way that people from home do – caring, soft, the type of man to stop at a corner and look back to make sure Neville is still with him and not stuck a half-block back.  

But his accent is all Othor, and it makes Neville  _wonder_ –

For the briefest of moments before Rolf kisses him, of course, hands knotted tightly at the back of Neville’s head; Rolf kisses like someone who’s kissed before, all slow and then fast, but his hands fumble for purchase on Neville’s arms as he digs deeper, kissing like he’d die without it.

Breaking free with his breath coming out in desperate gasps, Rolf turns to his bed, pausing as he remembers it’s simply a comfortable hammock; he turns his gaze to the floor, squeezing Neville’s hand, but the floor is littered with cages and cats and rats and Kneazles, and a non-negotiable no-go zone.

“Your room?” he asks breathlessly, letting Neville shyly tuck some of his wild hair behind his ear.

“I share it with Luna,” Neville says softly; Rolf frowns.

“Lock her out?” he suggests, but Neville shakes his head emphatically.

“We can’t do that!”

“No, I’m sorry, of course we can’t,” Rolf says, appalled at himself for a moment; he frantically looks around until his eyes finally settle back on the hammock. He sighs, and slowly begins to undo the safety pins on his second strap, revelling in the slow widening of Neville’s eyes and the hitching of his breath.

He undoes the button and lets the overalls drop; hypnotised, Neville follows him wordlessly across the room, forgetting the entire rest of the world in the map of freckles on Rolf’s back.

-

“ _WE GOT PIRATES_!”

Neville bursts out of his cabin and into sheer chaos: the deck is full of people, many wielding cutlasses sharper than the swords of Gidi’s home guard, and he careens towards Luna – Rolf and Charlie are unapproachable, Rolf surrounded by a swarm of sharp-talon eagles and Charlie smashing in the face of a bearded man built like a dragon with his bronze knuckledusters, grinning manically with the adrenaline that courses through his veins.

He starts as a hand grabs at Luna’s collar, and without a second thought, fire comes spiralling up through him and then out, spinning out and curling around Luna’s attacker, squeezing tight with third-degree burns. He’s never really used magic for anything but convenience before, but it comes so naturally to him now and when the fire regroups and spills on the pirate, a wave of heat, it takes his consciousness to pull it back, staring wide-eyed at the scorched burns he’s left behind.

The pirate stumbles back, and the ship’s second mate kicks him over the side. “Nice one, mate,” he grins at Neville.

Neville can’t unsee the fire, and goes still as he watches the fight.

-

The airship’s medical bay is surprisingly large, full of small beds and boxes full of this and that pilfered from various cities; Luna, white mage to the core, loves pottering around in it, even though she doesn’t really need any of the equipment: just her own magic, cool against the pain of the lacerations on Charlie’s arms. He doesn’t mind being patched up, regarding Neville with wary eyes.

“Are you okay, Nev?” he asks, trying to ignore the distraction of the white light in Luna’s hands.

“We just – I just –  _burned_ him!” Rolf reaches over to squeeze Neville’s arm; he’s patching up the wing of one of the many eagles he summoned, apparently with a small bell he keeps in his pocket (Neville’s almost hesitant to believe it, despite the fact that, of course, he just summoned fire from nowhere). “And then – Blaise threw him off…”

“They were here to kill us, Neville,” Charlie replies, voice steady and cool. “I wouldn’t have the reputation I did if I let my would-be assassins return to the skies, would I?” He sighs. “It’s hard at first, I get it, but it’s our lives or theirs. This is what it’s like out here.”

He lets Luna finish healing him before standing up and walking over to Neville, tangling his fingers in Neville’s dark hair; his hands are still warm, and Neville resists the urge to allow himself to buck his head into Charlie’s hand. “I think you ought to go to Othor. It’s harsh here in the skies. I’m sorry you had to see it in person.”

“I’ll go get you some soup,” Rolf says. “You want to go back to your room?”

“I prefer yours,” Neville says, flushing. “For the animals.”

Rolf raises an eyebrow, but can’t stop the grin from spreading across his face. “Okay, sure, me too. Come on. Soup.” He reaches out his hand and Neville takes it gracefully, following him along the corridor; Charlie snorts, taking a seat where Neville had been, crossing one leg over the other.

“God, he’s cute,” he says, leaning his chin on his hand. Luna giggles.

“He is. So is Rolf.” She pauses for a moment, glancing over. “You too.”

-

They stop for fuel in Coracre, known to the ship’s crew as  _comfort food central_ , and so Charlie decides to take Rolf and his little Academy stowaways out for pie; Neville seems to be recovering with surprising certainty, and they’ve avoided further attack likely from the news of the first’s failure and the news that they have a black mage on board, so when they return to the ship, Charlie decides to make his proposal –

In Neville and Luna’s room, of course, because they have the biggest of their little quartet.

“So,” he says – they’re all seated in a little circle, and he  _loves it_ , because he can speak to everybody’s bright-eyed faces and can see the broiling excitement in Rolf’s eyes. “Rolf and I were talking, and I think we’ve had an idea.” Charlie traces a circle on his thigh, grinning. “We all like each other – so, instead of ignoring it, why don’t we  _all_  go out?”

Neville frowns. “What do you mean,  _all_  go out?”

“I think he means that, instead of a couple, we’re all a quad,” Luna says dreamily. “There’s four of us in this relationship, not two.”

“Will that work?” Neville asks, looking around – it’s  _true_ , he really does like them all and probably has a few too many feelings than he can really deal with sometimes for them all, but the idea of trying to wrangle spending enough time with all three of them makes his head hurt. He wants to be idealistic, but he’s just too much of a thinking mess.

“There’s only one way to find out,” Charlie replies. Neville looks at him, for a moment in slow-motion, and then lurches forward, hands clapping to Charlie’s cheeks, and kisses him.

-

“Is this your first time dating?” Charlie asks – the four of them are all sitting out on the deck and bathing in the Western sun; he’s lying sprawled on his back while Neville is sitting cross-legged, flicking through some of his new coursework now that they’re getting ever closer to Othor.

“It isn’t,” he says, flushing, “but it’s my first time – dating – a man. Two men.” He shifts, shutting the book and wiping a layer of dust from the hard cover. “Why – do you like me?”

“Too many reasons to count,” Charlie replies, shifting his arm from where it’s covering his eyes to sit up and drape an arm around Neville’s shoulders. “But really, the reason I noticed you in the first place is because it takes someone  _very_  ballsy to sneak onto  _my_ ship – and two of you? Academy students, no less. The kind of person who would put their education and lives in jeopardy just to cross the country and  _finish_  said education is the kind of person I’d like to know better.” He laughs, softly, earnestly. “And then I got to know you. And you’re not the kind of ballsy kid I was expecting – but you’re sweet, the pair of you.”

“It’s not that Luna is ballsy,” Neville admits, looking over to her – she’s talking to Rolf, the two of them admiring one of his intricately patterned summoning bells, “she just… doesn’t seem to understand that she’s being that way. Or maybe she just doesn’t care – we’ve been roommates since we started, but she’s still a mystery to me.” He leans in, resting his head against Charlie’s chest and feeling the rhythm of his heartbeat. “What about you and Rolf?”

“He’s just as much of a stowaway as you two,” Charlie muses. “When I first got this ship – stole it, actually, from a couple of sky pirates – he was waiting there, and asked me if he could come with. I’m pretty sure he’s from Othor, since he has the heaviest accent I’ve ever heard, but I don’t know much about him – just that he seems to have been anywhere and everywhere.” He reaches over a hand, and shouts. “Oi! Rolf! Luna! C’mover here. We’re going downstairs.”

Neville stills. “Downstairs?”

Charlie quirks his brows. “Downstairs – you don’t want to?”

Neville goes redder than the magma Charlie has seen flowing from volcanoes. “I’ve just… never… gone the whole way.”

“We can go slow.”

Rolf interjects. “We don’t have to do this at all.”

“No,” Neville says slowly. “I want to. Before we have to leave.” His voice drops. “I’m going to miss you. I want to spend time with you. Everything just feels so – surreal, and new, and a little bit scary.” He winds his fingers with Luna’s; hers are always cool with her magic, but his hand is clammy with sweat. “And then it’ll all be normal again, like none of this ever happened.”

“Except it won’t be,” says Rolf, “because nothing’s ever the same once you’ve flown over the world.”

It’s true, but not necessarily – because nothing is the same after they trail downstairs, all four of them, hand-in-hand, and Neville feels what it’s like to be a part of something – of some _one_ ; the feeling is more beautiful than the cracks in the Gulf, the spires of Giri, the festival streets of Catoosa, the sunset in the West where the yellow sun bleeds into the ground.

It’s more than home: it’s  _new_.

-

Othor is never far away, and within a month, they’ve arrived: Neville and Luna hang over the deck, staring wide-eyed at the tall limestone buildings, culminating in the city’s tour de force – the Academy. It’s huge, so high in the sky at its pinnacle that it’s almost height with the airship, and Charlie is careful as he steers to avoid it, leaving just Rolf with their two stowaways.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he says with a grin; Neville can’t even respond, so awed by it all: it’s a beautiful day in Othor, with blazing sunshine and cobbled streets and a huge river running through the city, and he can see the Academy students in their lighter robes wandering around, and he can’t believe he ever thought of bailing on it. “I’ve been everywhere with Charlie, but I always miss it here.”

Luna buries her head in his chest for a moment. “It won’t be the same without you and Charlie.”

“We’ll miss you, too,” Rolf says earnestly, watching as the ship finally docks. “But, I suppose it’s time to part ways.”

Charlie is waiting for them outside, leaning against the hull of the ship; the rest of the crew have gathered too to say their farewells, from their matron Hannah to second mate Blaise, but Neville is desperate to get back to Charlie, who hugs both him and Luna so tightly he squeezes the breath out of them, smothering them with warm kisses.

“So, you’ll be studying for another two years, right?” he says, tucking some of Neville’s hair behind his ear; Luna nods. “Great. We’ll be back for you in two years – that is, of course, unless some business brings us back here first…” He has a twinkle in his eye that just  _suggests_ , and Rolf grins, too, pressing a kiss to the back of Luna’s neck.

“And we’ll travel?” Neville asks.

“Oh, yes,” Charlie says, rubbing his hands together. “Trust me, dear, you haven’t even seen the half of it yet.”


	16. Records at Breakfast (Charlie x Rolf x Neville)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> student radio au

“That was  _Paracetamol_  by Declan McKenna - yes, we haven’t forgotten about him - and that means it’s time for us to wrap up now! As ever, thanks for tuning in, don’t forget to eat breakfast, and have a great day. We’re Charlie and Neville, this has been  _Don’t you forget about milk_  on KILV, and we’ll leave you on Why  _Didn’t You Say That?_  by The Lemon Twigs; Luna Lovegood and  _The 12” menagerie_  on next. See you on Wednesday, Ilvermorny!”

Neville is already waiting by the door when Charlie exits the claustrophobic radio booth, wrapped up with a scarf, smiling lightly, as if he might break by smiling too wide. “That went well,” he says.

“Twitter’s pretty happy about the Glen Hansard song; I think we might’ve unleashed some fans,” Charlie laughs, pulling on his coat and waving to Luna; he always half-wonders if she shouldn’t be hosting a TV show instead, with her wildly eccentric clothes and strawberry earrings. “Hey, isn’t her co-host meant to start today? Where are they?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen anyone,” Neville shrugs, glancing around; just as he’s about to step out to look for the mystery guest, he appears in a flurry of billowing cardigan, wild-eyed and with hair fluffed in various directions. He’s slightly tall, gangly, and shifts restlessly from foot to foot, staring right at Neville and also right through him. “There he is,” Neville says, sounding only mildly surprised.

“I got the lineup changed,” the boy gasps. “Can’t… start with…  _Rock Me Like a Hurricane_ …” He wheezes, taking a few hits of a small blue inhaler before straightening up. “Oh my God, you’re Charlie and Neville.”

“That’s us,” Charlie says cheerily. “You must be Luna’s co-host. Nice to meet you; good luck with her.”

“Yeah, I’m Rolf,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “Oh, please help me. Her music choice is off the wall and I haven’t heard a single good thing on campus about the show. It took me half an hour just to try and sort out today’s show.”

Charlie laughs. “You free after your show?” Rolf nods. “Meet me at Starbucks then, and I’ll try and sort something out for you. Nev’s got classes, or he’d help, I’m sure.”

“Okay,” Rolf says, turning to the door, pausing for a brief moment to turn. “ _White Light Doorway_  is an okay opener, right?”

“Absolutely perfect,” Charlie agrees, trying to stifle his amusement as Rolf enters the studio, a rabbit in the headlights. “Aw, he’s sweet. Here’s hoping he won’t get steamrolled by our dearest Luna.”

Neville clicks his tongue. “I wish  _we’d_  opened with Florist.”

–

“You know, I’d never actually heard of these guys until I heard their song in a movie, but I’ve got a feeling you’ll be hearing more of them at breakfast now - that movie is  _Suburban Gothic_ , very trippy, check it out; this is  _Such a Bore_  by Bass Drum of Death on KILV.”

Charlie leans back in his chair, glancing over at Neville as he shifts his headphones down to his neck. “So, heard the consensus on Rolf and Luna?”

“Everyone I’ve spoken to says they’re brilliant and that Rolf has completely improved the show,” Neville beams, trying to resist the urge to jump out of his seat. “I recorded a few to listen to, and they really are great, aren’t they?”

“Rolf’s sorted the music front, that’s for sure,” Charlie grins.

“What did you even tell him that day? I couldn’t have helped much; I mean, we just play what we like, don’t we?”

“I don’t play  _everything_  I like,” Charlie shrugs. “I try to keep it morning appropriate. No one wants to wake up to PUP. But I told him to try and build blocks between songs, as if he were making a playlist: don’t just jump from one extreme to another, but try and flow from one to the other. I also told him to check out what the rest of us play if he wanted to think about radio cohesiveness, but since Pansy and Blaise at six and Sirius on Thursday afternoons don’t, it doesn’t really matter.”

“I like Pansy and Blaise’s show,” Neville muses. “They play cool stuff.”

“Yeah, so I said it wasn’t too much of an issue,” Charlie nods. “It’s swings and roundabouts, I think, as to what Rolf goes for every day. But it’s working pretty well; yesterday’s show was so good someone put all the music on Spotify.” He puts his headphones back on, takes a moment to check Twitter, and leans back into the microphone. “That was  _Love in the 4th Dimension_  by The Big Moon followed by Beach Slang and  _Punks in a Disco Bar_. We asked you earlier to text in about your favourite new release. Thoughts, Neville?”

“The right answer to this is  _The OOZ_  by King Krule and I’m glad to see that Ernie Macmillan agrees with me,” he jokes. “Though I think Beck’s latest was good, too; it’s getting a lot of airplay on  _The 12” menagerie_ , so remember, don’t switch off after we’re done and support our friends, too.”

–

Neville’s afternoons are usually filled with classes, but Charlie has some time to himself after the show which he usually spends studying and either listening to something on Spotify or listening out to Luna and Rolf.

It’s to his surprise, then, when they’re doing a show on crushes featuring text-ins when Rolf admits, the blush audible in his thick accent, to having a crush on “Charlie from the show before us” before dedicating  _Walking on a Dream_  to him.

“I know this is totally one-sided,” he says over the airwaves, “but he’s so nice, and he has great music taste - well, that puts me in agreement with most of the campus, for once…”

Charlie fumbles for his phone and shoots a message off to Neville, his stomach doing acrobatics with glee.

(In no world does Charlie expect  _Neville_  to send a text in to Rolf and Luna proclaiming his love for Charlie; Rolf’s response to this is Beck’s  _Debra_ , which he plays, he says “ironically”.)

–

It’s not in Charlie’s vested interest to host a breakfast show with someone who has feelings for him without discussing those feelings first, and so he meets Neville for pizza in the Italian restaurant by the student apartments, laughing to himself as he hears Pansy’s dulcet tones over the stereo.

“I’m sorry,” Neville says immediately. “I’ve made things difficult for you; I’m so sorry…”

“No,” Charlie says, vigorously, leaning across the table. “I’m glad you told me, cause truth be told, I kinda like you too. It’s just that I like Rolf, too, and the idea that I have to somehow make a choice between you is…” He trails off, not entirely sure where he’s going or if it’s stupidly selfish; he’s never been the target of anyone’s public affection, never mind two people at once, and he wishes there was a handbook on this kind of thing.

“Maybe you don’t have to choose,” Neville suggests, leaning in reciprocally and lowering his voice. “I’ve heard about multiple people dating before, and maybe - maybe we could try it.”

“You think you’re up for that?” Charlie asks, frowning lightly. Neville nods awkwardly. “Okay. Have you asked Rolf?”

“He suggested the idea,” Neville says shyly, looking away. “He found me after the show and we - talked about stuff. Sorry. I should’ve said, but - it’s just kinda hard to suggest that…”

The pizza arrives and Charlie takes a bite, with vigour. “Stop being sorry, Nev! I get it, proposing the idea of a poly relationship or whatever they call it is hard, but I’m down for it, so just - stop apologising.”

“Sorry,” Neville replies out of instinct; for a moment, they look at each other and burst into laughter. “I swear I didn’t mean to do that!” he giggles, only to be interrupted by Charlie’s lips on his; he’s stiff out of surprise but slackens, comfortable, one of Charlie’s hands tucked at the back of his neck and winding in the ends of his hair.

“How long do you think it’s gonna take before that’s made its way round student Twitter?” Charlie asks as he sets back to his pizza, stealing the lemon from Neville’s water.

“It probably already has,” Neville replies.

(He’s not wrong.)

–

“I think the eighties are my favourite decade - I know there’s plenty to be said for the seventies, definitely not the nineties, but I’ve been really enjoying the nostalgia boom right now and I think it’s a phenomenal decade, visually and musically - and, you know, we got our name from The Breakfast Club, so we have a lot to be thankful to the eighties for. Have you guys all seen the second series of  _Stranger Things_  yet? Charlie and I binge-watched the whole thing last night. It was so good! I really enjoyed it; Tweet me your thoughts, spoiler-free, at k-i-l-v-milk, and here, suggested by Seamus, are The Human League with  _Don’t You Want Me_.”

Charlie drums on the table. “So, where’d Rolf say we’d meet after class?”

“He said he’d treat us to coffee and cake at the chocolate café. What’s it called? Choco-Latte?”

“I think so. Can’t say I’ve ever really thought about the name, just that the cake is fucking delicious,” Charlie grins. “Did you have an alright sleep last night? All two hours or whatever of it. I’d have asked this morning, but…”

“You were too busy shoving toast in my face,” Neville finishes. “I slept okay, I think. But I kinda just want to watch  _Stranger Things_  again. Maybe we should do it with Rolf. I don’t know if he’s ever seen it.” He scrolls through Twitter, raising an eyebrow. “Rolf has just suggested  _Close to Me_.”

“He likes The Cure! Mercy Lewis, we’re playing that one next.” He kicks his chair back over to the desk, prepping for the song to finish; he starts as Neville reaches out to grasp his hand, tightly, looking as if there’s something he’ll burst if he doesn’t say.

“Charlie?” he whispers, looking up shyly. “Yesterday - that kiss - it was my first.”

–

Charlie orders a tad much at Choco-Latte and they take the remainders of his lunch and another few slices of cake back to Rolf’s to finish off; Rolf’s house is a matrix of rich corridors decorated in bright IKEA furniture that doesn’t look like it’s been assembled quite right, a Billy bookcase collapsing by his bedroom and a long-haired cat curled up on top of a cardigan that’s fallen from his clothes horse.

Neville gets a little lost on his way to the bathroom: Rolf’s house is enchanting, interestingly decorated with paintings being sold by strapped-for-cash art students or picked up at art fairs and pinned-up magazine covers and framed records. He stops more than once to reach down and scratch behind the ears of a cat or dog, and he catches a glimpse into Rolf’s airy bedroom where birds sing in a complex of cages.

“The toilet’s that way,” Rolf’s voice chirps helpfully, and Neville starts, spinning around. “It’s okay. I like to look at the birds, too.” He grins, bashfully, as if Neville’s just discovered a secret - but the kind of secret that he wants to be discovered and shared. “Charlie’s going to put on  _The Breakfast Club_ , by the way, if that’s alright with you.”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Neville nods, turning. “Um… thank you. For this. For coming out with us and letting us in here to watch movies.”

“No problem,” Rolf says, with a smile. “I like you. Both of you.”

Neville is somehow able to find his way back to the living room from the toilet without much more distraction than a hairless cat trying to trip him up, which Rolf spots and removes. “Sorry,” he says, lightly kissing the cat’s head. “This is Leta. She likes to do that. Leta, come on, what did I tell you about bothering people…”

Charlie is on the sofa, cupping a mug of hot chocolate in his hands and singing along to Simple Minds, and so Neville sits next to him, locating his slice of chocolate cheesecake among the menagerie of cocoa and digging into it with a spork.

“Doesn’t he have forks?” Neville asks, frowning. “Or - spoons?”

“I believe that sporks are Rolf’s ideal implement for cake eating,” Charlie replies, grinning and lifting his. “Look! It’s even got a smiley face on it. We should talk about this on the show.”

“It’s silly, but… I would love some of these,” Neville says, smiling back at his spork. “I know that people would just laugh at me, and maybe you would too, but they’re sweet.” Charlie laughs softly - but earnestly, and runs a hand through Neville’s hair, making Neville flush. “W-what?”

“Nothing,” Charlie chuckles, shifting over as Rolf joins them on the sofa. “Whatever happened to these guys? Molly Ringwald was  _huge_  in the eighties. More importantly, what happened to John Hughes?”

“He died,” Rolf says, glancing over. “Didn’t you hear? It was a few years ago.”

Charlie’s eyes are wide as saucers as he sits up. “What? No! I missed this news! Not John Hughes -  _Ferris Bueller_ was my childhood! Neville! My childhood! It’s been over for years and I didn’t know!” He reaches out, his hand grasping at Neville’s arm and for the briefest moment an electric shock passes between them that stops Charlie in his tracks for a moment as he flinches. “Christ. You’re electric, Nev.”

“ _Keep your ’lectric eye on me, babe_ ,” Rolf sings, startled as both Charlie and Neville turn to him. “Um… hello.”

“That was the first song we ever played together,” Neville says, softly, his eyes wistful. “On the show. We wanted to play something that felt like growing up, because we were.”

“I didn’t know,” Rolf admits. “It’s just one of my favourite songs, and one of my favourite albums, and I like David Bowie, and…” Neville cuts him off with a kiss, lightly pressing a hand against Rolf’s back and against the fabric of his yellow polo shirt; it’s short, and Neville can’t stop himself from giggling when he pulls back, overwhelmed by everything.

Their hands intertwine, and as they turn back to the movie, Charlie stretches his arm out as far as he can around the pair of them.

–

“Ilvermorny! Good morning to you all, and what a good morning it is indeed. I’ve been having a fantastic time over the last two months, which I know is contrary to the general mood on campus, but why can’t we all feel great, even just for this morning? Buy yourself a cake. Eat a cookie. Splurge on that top you were thinking of buying - it’ll look great.”

“But before you do that, stay tuned,” Neville adds, reaching over for Charlie’s hand. “We’re on for the next hour, and after that, our good friends Rolf and Luna are going to be spinning the best tunes of this year so far. Now, here’s a song for someone special:  _Apartment_ by Modern Baseball, a song I don’t think we play enough.”

He lets go of Charlie just long enough to spin around to Rolf, taking up an extra seat in the booth, eyes shining. “Maybe we should go for cake after this,” he says. “And watch-”

“ _Pretty In Pink_ ,” Charlie says immediately. “We need to watch  _Pretty In Pink_.”


	17. Northern Soul (James x Regulus)

James takes to Spotify almost immediately, and despite Regulus’s numerous objections about the state of the year two-thousand-seventeen, he has to admit that the free and wide access of music is something that even he can appreciate, even if he doesn’t so much appreciate James’s taste in music. It becomes their routine, then, that when they get up, living in the tiny flat that they share with Teddy, the first thing they do is put some music on to make breakfast to.

Regulus and James scarcely argue, but when they do, it’s usually over the music: it’s a hotly contested subject between the two of them, even more so than what constitutes a reasonable breakfast (cake: no, pancakes: yes). James wants something with a beat that he can dance to, something that gives him time to jive around the kitchen as he waits for the bacon to cook; Regulus wants something laid-back to watch the clouds crawl across the lazy blue sky and to water the dancing plants on the windowsill to.

They each have separate playlists on Spotify that they man carefully during the evenings on Teddy’s laptop, which only occasionally crashes on them (“it’s the magic,” Teddy tells them through a Pot Noodle, “it fucks with technology a bit”), and it’s up to their own back-and-forth discretion whose is played each day.

That discretion almost always leads to James’s playlist.

The days when Regulus gets his are truly good days, the kind of days where he feels as if nothing can go wrong; those are the days when the pancake doesn’t hit the ceiling when James performs his usual overenthusiastic flip and the days where there’s still enough milk in the fridge for James’s tea and Regulus’s coffee.

“Come look at this,” James says through a mouthful of cereal, flipping lazily through one of Teddy’s many scrapbooks, huge ventures of artistic prowess and bad photographs. “I found Teddy’s graduation photo. There’s his dorm photo, here - wow, these kids get so much these days, huh? - and here’s the whole year photo.” Regulus peers over his shoulder: the photos are better taken than most he’s seen from Teddy before, official ones this time, and he can make out the grinning and unfamiliar faces of Teddy’s dormmates and year. “Okay, ignore the other little shits.” (Regulus refrains from pointing out that said ‘little shits’ aren’t much younger than himself and James.) “See here? Doesn’t that teacher there look an awful lot like Frank Longbottom?”

Regulus follows James’s pointer finger, and pauses for a moment; he knows who Frank Longbottom is, because everybody knows the boy who accidentally blew up a Hogwarts corridor whilst failing to invent a new spell, and it takes him a few seconds to find him in the smiling teacher’s face, but it’s easily found: Frank is evident in his eyes and in the curve of his shy grin. “That must be Frank’s son. Who do you think his mother is?”

“I…” James pauses. “I don’t know, actually. Frank kinda gives the impression of the guy who’d live alone with just Kneazles or something.” He scours the teacher’s face. “You know, I’m sure I’ve seen those dimples in someone before. But I can’t think who.”

“It’ll come to you,” Regulus says. “Finish your cereal.” He gives James a soft pat on the shoulder before returning to the television, legs crossed on the sofa with a croissant and The Wright Stuff.

-

Regulus and James generally struggle with the new millennium, but they don’t with music: there’s something that just isn’t terrifying behind beaming album covers, and nothing to confuse them in the simple art of popping a CD into the stereo or placing a needle onto a record, and that’s why Teddy chooses to take them out to a record store in the middle of Muggle London one weekend. It’s where they’re most happy, and considering they spend their week running odd jobs and errands in the bustle of a significantly busier and renovated Diagon Alley, he thinks they deserve some happiness.

Not that he knows who they are, of course, deeming them simply delightful oddballs.

Regulus winds his fingers with James’s somewhere in the compilations aisle, his other hand considering three discs of mod classics; there’s just something about James’s excitability that keeps Regulus convinced he’ll bound off somewhere, and if he does, Regulus wants to be there, too.

James leans in to his ear. “Do you really want a Northern soul record, or should we go get some chips?”

“There is nothing wrong with Northern soul,” Regulus replies half-indignantly, but he slots it back into its lonely place on the shelf. He makes more money than James from his zero-hours shifts at Flourish and Blotts, so their handful of musical odds and ends is his treat, despite James’s loud protestations - but there’s something about being a Black that makes Regulus feel as if he’ll never stop having to pay penance, and if that means a few Yeah Yeah Yeahs records, he doesn’t mind.

Teddy has so many albums that he needs two bags, sitting with satisfactory glee at their table in McDonald’s as James and Regulus lightly bicker over the benefits of storing fries in the lid of the burger box.

“You two ever plan to move out of my house?” he asks teasingly, popping a cheese bite into his mouth. “Or just hoard my space and keep buying music?”

James glances over, something soft in his gaze as he does so, a moment of vulnerability that Regulus doesn’t get to see often. “Well, it sure is nice hoarding all your space,” he laughs, and for a moment there’s almost a strange spark between him and Regulus as their legs brush, Doc Marten and brogue. “But maybe I’ll think about it.”

They both give way and let Teddy play what he’s bought when they get home, a bouncing indie pop record that implores Teddy and James to dance on the sofa, and for Regulus to perhaps maybe tap his foot while he grins up at them.

-

It took Regulus, at first, approximately three days to realise that sleeping on Teddy’s couch was going to do either one of their backs in, and he’s been sharing a bed with James ever since, slowly expanding from tucked in at the side to lovingly half-sprawled over James, like an extra breathing blanket with a steady heartbeat.

“We should leave,” Regulus notes as he peels his top off, a black long-sleeved tee. “I mean… there are things we did, in the past, that we haven’t done and have to do. I feel like people are relying on us.”

“Yeah,” James mumbles, glancing down at the duvet. “But I like it here. We could stay. At least until we’ve finished those albums. We don’t have to go just yet.”

“It’s been six months,” says Regulus, tucking himself under the covers. “We’re going to have to leave eventually. So that I can help take down the Dark Lord, and you can father the Chosen One. We have very important things to do.” He rests his head in the crook of James’s arm, and swallows: he’s being truthful, but not honest in that he’s terrified, because this is a life he’s accustomed to and one he doesn’t want to let go of. He wants to stay with James and watch the sunlight filter through the blinds to the sound of Twin Peaks in the morning, and float books up the stairs at Flourish and Blotts, and watch the worst of trashy modern television cross-legged on the sofa with sweets and Teddy. He doesn’t want to die alone in a cave, knowing that James will again be dedicated to someone else, and doomed too to die with little life left.

Regulus likes two-thousand-and-seventeen.

“Eventually,” James repeats, fluffing Regulus’s hair, still growing from the buzzcut he’d had to hide himself. “And - don’t forget it, cause I know you’re going to - when we go back, I’m with you. We can go to the cave thing together. You don’t have to die.”

Regulus smiles; he doesn’t know if that’s true, and if the world will be as ideal as James wants it to be, but in the comfort before he dozes off, he likes to think that everything will be alright, past or future.


	18. Soul No. 5 (Rowan x George)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my favourite kind of au: a high school au

**i.  
**Rowan’s first high school party is very likely Ilvermorny High’s first proper high school party; the school’s social life has kept itself to students getting drunk in parking lots and terrorising Walmarts and skater kids smoking blunts round the back of Wendy’s, neither of which Rowan has been involved in - in fact, he almost ignores George’s constant pestering of him to come, but is eventually persuaded by the tag-team of Penny and Tonks, who even come over to help him dress.

“I don’t need help dressing,” he says. “I do it every day.”

“And it’s tragic every day,” Penny reminds him; Rowan would quibble, but she’s right. He’s never much had an eye for fashion, always looking to this friend or that for some kind of helpful advice and never really moving beyond denim shirts and chinos. “Dude, buy some jeans or something. Chinos are not the answer. And don’t you have any black T-shirts? Do you know what a fashion essential is?”

“Penny, I don’t even know what a fashion no-no is, never mind a fashion essential. There’s a black T-shirt in next to the black trousers there.”

“I respect the colour coding of your wardrobe, Rowan, but trying to find anything in this black section is a fucking nightmare.” Penny grunts, feigning rolling up her sleeves (she’s wearing a very pretty sequined sleeveless dress that Tonks can’t keep her eyes off) as she plunges back into Rowan’s wardrobe, which hasn’t seen a clean since he started high school aged eleven and is still home to an alarming amount of T-shirts so small they would now function as crop tops. “God, you need a personal shopper or something.”

But between her and Tonks, they make up an outfit for Rowan: a black T-shirt, some dark red chinos, a pair of black Converse (Rowan thinks Vans are too skater). He doesn’t own any necklaces, so Tonks sacrifices hers, tucking away the charm on it so that it’s just a chain round his neck, and she spins the ball of Rowan’s nose piercing so it sits on the outside, not the inside.

“There we go,” she says.

“People might not laugh at you in that,” Penny adds. “Don’t know if you’ll get any, though.”

“I wasn’t too worried about that,” Rowan says. “Nobody’s kissed me since him, and he moved to England after middle school, and I’m not sure I’ve met anybody I’ve wanted to kiss since then.”

“Don’t be picky!” Tonks laughs, elbowing him. “You never know who you could find. If I had been picky and dismissed princess here based on the fact that her hair is nowhere near as cool as mine, now where would I be?”

“At this party but alone,” Rowan answers, and Tonks huffs in the truth of the statement, rattling the chains looped through the belt holes of her red parachute trousers. They’ve walked instead of taking Tonks’s bright yellow car that she drives with far too much abandon so that they can all drink and smoke, and they still have a few blocks before they reach the Jordan household. It’s summer, but it’s rained during the day and the ground is slick, meaning Penny is walking carefully in her heels and even Tonks looks a little unsteady on her platforms.

Rowan’s not sure who Lee Jordan is; he knows that Lee hosts a podcast which is very popular among the students of Ilvermorny, but he’s never listened to it himself, and only really recognises Lee from seeing his trademark dip-dyed electric blue dreadlocks in the corridors. All he knows is that Lee is friends with Fred and George Weasley, who have been making Rowan’s life as hall monitor an absolute nightmare, and that Fred and George and their older brother Charlie had egged Lee to throw a party while his parents were away. He wonders how big Lee’s house is - almost the whole school seems to have been invited, from what Rowan has heard.

And from the sounds of it, the rumours were true - long before they even make the turn onto Lee’s avenue, Rowan can hear the vague pounding of music and the shouting of hundreds of unruly teenagers and thinks he should’ve insisted on staying home. This is not his style. He likes books, and reading, and studying. He doesn’t really do drinking, and has never smoked a joint in his life - he hasn’t even smoked a straight cigarette.

As if sensing his nerves, Penny reaches over and loops her arm with his. “Don’t worry. Just find a niche, and stay there unless you’re feeling adventurous. Don’t take any pills. Don’t drink too much, because I’m not carrying you home. Don’t kiss anybody without checking they swing your way or you might start a fight.”

“Why, has that happened before?”

“Tonks went to a party in another state and the fight was so bad the cops got called.”

Rowan’s legs almost go from beneath him. “Oh, fuck.”

“Best case scenario, keep your lips to yourself.”

“You’ll be fine,” Tonks assures him, and that’s when they push through the crowd in the garden and through the front door, right into the heart of the chaos. Rowan almost immediately loses his companions just in the act of trying to find something to drink that isn’t beer - it’s a battle he thinks he isn’t going to win until he discovers the kitchen, where someone is showing off their skills in making Bloody Marys, and he swipes one off the table as he passes through into the living room.

It’s a little quieter than any other room he’s so far caught eyes on, all of which are packed wall to wall with gyrating students all holding red solo cups (Rowan has a glass, which simultaneously sparks a joyful individuality and a fear of standing out). It’s a little mellower, the music slightly less deafening and a few people dancing and a few more stretched out on sofas. Someone is smoking a joint, but Rowan doesn’t recognise them, and is a little too afraid to just ask.

George Weasley bustles past him, straight to the boy with the joint, and asks if he can have a smoke. The boy laughs and hands it over, and George takes the opportunity of a few puffs before turning back and noticing Rowan. His eyes light up, and Rowan feels the need to leave the room before George decides to cause him more trouble.

“I can’t believe you’re here!” he cheers, immediately settling in next to Rowan. “Didn’t think it was your type of thing.”

“It’s not,” says Rowan, whose throat burns.

“Have some beer and it’ll be your type of thing soon,” George assures him, forcing Rowan to take a few disgusting sips before his screwed-up eyes give George the indication that a Bloody Mary is as good a drink as Rowan is going to procure. “You’ll have fun. Promise. If you stop hanging out in here and go dance.”

“I can’t really dance,” Rowan winces. “And my drink-”

“Chug it or put it down and run the risk.”

Rowan has to chug it in sections, and it takes him what feels like a stupidly long time, but George seems to take no heed of this: he eggs Rowan on tirelessly, clapping his hands and singing some drinking song over and over, trying to get Rowan to finish on a countdown, with little luck, and so eventually shifts to the tactic of whooping and applause.

Rowan slams the glass down on a small coffee table, coughing a few times, feeling like he’s been drinking heat packs. “I think I’m a wine man,” he wheezes.

“I think you’re a wine uncle,” George agrees, slinging an arm around Rowan’s shoulder and grinning at him; Rowan’s not sure if it’s the fact he’s still a little dizzy-feeling from having chugged that much liquid at once, but he swears that stomach does a little dip. He hopes he’s not going to be sick on George; but then again, it would be perfect revenge for all the chaos George has caused in school.

Still. George is standing here, speaking to him, so he’s not too much of a terror.

“This is your first party, isn’t it?” George says, leading Rowan into a room that’s busier: some people are dancing, or what seems to qualify more as jumping around in time to the thumping bass going through the floorboards, and quite a few are gathered around a table of cups, drinking away and gossiping loudly about everything from how often Mr Snape washes his hair to whether or not Fred and Lee were caught kissing on the bleachers after basketball. Rowan nods in answer. “Then I shall be your party tutor in the ways of having a good time. Rule one is drink a lot. Rule two is don’t drink too much, because if this night goes well for you, I’m sure you’ll want to remember it. Rule three is don’t overthink things.”

“How can I avoid overthinking things when both you and my friends have given me a long list of rules and dos and don’ts? You’re being contradictory!”

“Rule number four,” George says, poking Rowan’s nose. “Don’t use the word contradictory at a party, or you will never pick up a girl.”

“Boy,” Rowan corrects, so automatically that he flushes when he realises what he’s said. “Which makes it harder, I guess.”

“You’re overthinking. Come dance.”

Instead of letting Rowan dance in that crowd, George takes Rowan into the chaotic front room, pushing him into the throng; Rowan’s instinct is to panic and he tries to reach out to George like he’s falling, but is quickly swallowed up by the crowd, people jamming into the empty spaces between the two, leaving Rowan to fend for himself in a hyper mosh pit of teens. For several moments, he has to get over the absolute sensory overload: people are pushing at him, crushing against him, skin against his from every side; he can barely hear anything but the beastly yawn of a bass drop; the floor under him pulsates with the beat, a heartbeat against his feet.

There is only one way to survive this.

Rowan dances. It’s not true that he can’t dance - he did ballet as a kid, ballroom in his early teens - but he can’t dance in a way that’s cool, but it doesn’t seem to matter, because nobody is watching and everybody is doing their own thing. There isn’t a dance, except perhaps the common theme of jumping, and so Rowan lets himself be taken by the flow, sucked up by the vortex of flannel shirts, swinging his hips to the rhythm that he feels and letting his body take him, surrendering into the crowd, unselfconscious of the way he bashes into others, no longer over-observant of how differently he dances compared to everyone else, keener to follow the music than to bounce until he pools with sweat.

He doesn’t know how long it’s been when George finds him and they bundle out of the room in search of more alcohol, but Rowan feels amazing: he feels fresh, loose, awake, alive. He grins at George.

“I think I might like parties,” he says.

“Yeah?” George squeezes his arm; Rowan feels his stomach go funny, again. Maybe drinking and immediately dancing isn’t so good for the digestion. “Right then, party animal. Time for our real measure of your talents: beer pong.” Rowan shudders; he can barely play table tennis when he’s sober, never mind when he’s had a Blood Mary down him with the looming threat of more alcohol, but he’s got a little bit of a buzz to him now, and nods enthusiastically, following George through to some other room in the maze where a whole ping pong table has been set up, each side being set up with a triangle of cups of beer.

Rowan starts shabbily: he’s never been the best with coordination, even less so the more beer he forces down. But he starts to get a feel for it, and George is a natural: soon, they can almost hold their own against Harry (soccer captain) and Lee (basketball), but the jock pair are doing a startlingly good job at getting Rowan quite significantly drunk. He ate before he left - Rowan loves a hearty dinner, he can’t focus when he’s hungry - but the alcohol is beginning to hit him like a sledgehammer, and he’s torn somewhere at the end of the game between dive-bombing back into dancing or leaning against the wall and groaning.

So he dances, because he doesn’t much like the idea of groaning around. He loses himself for a while among the people, letting the irresponsibility flow over him: he has no worries, no fears, no regrets, nothing to weigh him down.

Until he starts feeling sick, and wanders to the kitchen for a cup of water. There are no Bloody Marys left, which he guesses is all the better as he fills a glass from the tap, taking tentative sips before letting loose and gulping it thirstily down, letting water drip down his face and wash over his top.

As he’s setting the glass down, he notices from the corner of his eye a flash of packaging. It’s a little plastic box, the flimsy kind that brownies and hordes of gingerbread men come in; he spins round and rescues a box of twenty brownie bites from the floor.

When George walks in, Rowan is shovelling brownie bites.

“This is where you went?”

“Brownies are good.”

“So they are.” George helps himself to a piece, and grins, taking a seat on the dinner table next to Rowan. Rowan can tell it’s George because there’s a calmness to his aura; Fred is manic, but George is mellower, quicker to sly wits than to loud performances. And more empathetic, Rowan thinks. “There’s vodka lemonades going, if you want one.”

“God yes,” Rowan says emphatically, but doesn’t move: his gaze has become transfixed on George’s mouth, on his lips, on the sharp little curve of his Cupid’s bow. It’s not subtle. He practically can’t keep his eyes away.

“Do you want to make out?” George asks, quirking his eyebrows.

“More than I want vodka lemonade,” says Rowan.

George kisses him.

 **ii.  
**It’s George’s full intention to beat Rowan off in the kitchen, but when it gets busier with people looking for water and staying for brownie bites and the view, Rowan demands privacy and George concedes.

“Rowan,” George says as they tramp up the stairs, trying every room and encountering half a dozen other couples enjoying privacy. Rowan is tripping over his own feet and giggling manically each time he does, but George still seems unreasonably sober for the time of night, his face half-serious in the light. “How drunk are you?”

“I’m having a great time,” Rowan says enthusiastically, and that’s when George turns round, kisses him again, and tells him that they’ll do this another time, when they’re sober, if they want to. Rowan blinks back at him, offense in his eyes, betrayed by George leaving him hanging; but he falls forward into George for a tight hug, and is sick a little on his shoulder.

George helps him find Penny and Tonks, and they walk Rowan home. He lies in bed, wishing he’d had more fun but feeling warm with the flush of dancing, his mind stupidly abuzz. He can’t stop thinking about George, about the feeling of his hand against Rowan’s bare skin; he also craves more of the brownie bites, sad that he didn’t hold them down for long.

At some point, he falls asleep.

* * *

“George Weasley was going to give me a handjob in the middle of the kitchen!” Rowan exclaims, knocking back another quarter of his coffee, groaning slightly as his eyes catch the fluorescence of the overhead lights. “He had his hand down my pants, I swear.”

“At my first party, I fell before I hurled and cracked my head off the toilet seat,” Tonks laughs. “You’re killing it, dude! What a good start. And George is pretty good-looking.”

“He’s not a troglodyte, you mean,” Penny scoffs, sipping at her iced coffee; she looks up at Rowan, flashing him a grin that’s so predatory he thinks he might run before she even manages the question. “So, do you want to kiss him when you’re sober?”

“Well…” Rowan smiles shyly, and Tonks laughs; in the distance, Penny catches sight of Ben coming in, and ushers him over. “I thought he was an asshole before, but he was really nice to me at that party. Maybe he’s not so bad. Ben, do you want some of this muffin? I don’t feel very well.”

“Um, maybe,” Ben says hesitantly, taking a seat and slinging his tote bag over his chair. “But if you don’t feel well, then-”

“He’s hungover,” Tonks fills in. “He’s not caught anything, don’t worry.”

Rowan smiles and pushes the plate over in front of Ben, who still looks rather hesitant at the thought that he’s about to come into contact with Rowan’s germs; even when Rowan assures him he’s been eating the muffin with a knife and fork like the oddball he is, Ben doesn’t look convinced, and heads up to the counter to get himself a coffee. Rowan smiles after him - Ben verges on being neurotic, but that’s what makes him Ben.

“Who else is coming?” Rowan asks.

Penny checks her phone. “Barnaby’s coming. Andre’s working, so he’ll be a bit later than everyone else, and Tulip hasn’t even read any of the messages, so I’d count her out.”

“Do we have to tell all of them what happened?”

“Not unless you want to.”

“Are you embarrassed?”

“It just- it feels really wrong to have to admit that, after so many years of being straight-laced, I went to a party, had far too much to drink, and got a little close to someone I’m supposed to hate.” Rowan twiddles his thumbs. “I’d rather wait and see what happens before I say anything.”

“Nobody here’s going to judge you,” Tonks offers. “Hell, we’re just glad you got the chance to have some fun. And make out with a boy, who was respectable enough not to have it off with you once he realised you were completely wasted.”

“I feel like what I did was stupid,” Rowan says, scratching at the back of his neck; Ben chooses that moment to return to the table having forgotten to take his wallet up, and looks at Rowan, eyes gentle and wary but brimming with curiosity.

“What did you do?” he asks, and before he knows what’s happened, Rowan has told his entire friend group in excruciating detail, Penny and Tonks interjecting to throw in juicy extras everywhere from seeing Rowan declare Lady Gaga to be a “pop goddess” to having to strip him to his underwear for bed because he had ruined his only normal clothes.

Barnaby, who arrived in the middle of the story and joined in listening like he’d never been away at all, loudly sips at his drink. “You should ask him to finish the job.”

Rowan chokes on his water.

“Okay, don’t do that,” Penny butts in, “but you should at least try and talk to him at school. From what you said, he seems like a nice guy under all the pranks, so I’m sure he’ll hear you out.”

“But what do I even to say to him?” Rowan asks, fidgeting with a button on his sleeve. “Oh, hi, George, I really enjoyed spending time with you at that party and I want to go out with you while we’re both sober. Also, can you actually masturbate me this time?”

“Cut out the last bit,” Barnaby advises. Rowan sighs.

* * *

“I can’t believe you made out with the hall monitor,” says Lee.

“I can’t believe you got the hall monitor to dance,” adds Harry.

“I can’t believe the hall monitor scored any points in beer pong,” Fred says thoughtfully. “While drunk.” He turns round and fetches two slices of toast from the toaster, proceeding to slather them both in more-than-generous amounts of butter before placing them on a plate and handing them over to Lee. None of them have yet found a hangover cure that works better than just eating breakfast, and so until they find anything better, this is their antidote to too much drinking. “So, o brother of mine, any plans for romantic dates with our favourite obsessive hall monitor?”

“You had your hand in his pants. You can’t leave him hanging,” Harry says. George groans. Rowan isn’t so bad when he’s out of his school responsibilities, sure, but with a bit more sobriety about him, George has no idea what he was thinking; he’s just got himself stuck, now, in a situation he’s not sure how to fix. There’s everybody’s favourite solution of trying to date Rowan. There’s ghosting him, which George isn’t prepared to do. And there’s trying to let him down gently, which doesn’t sound particularly great either. “You should go out with him, at least once. He’s in English with me. He’s nice. He’s helped me with a few essays before.”

“And if you date him, he might stop being such an asshole about me going to the toilet without a pass,” Lee adds.

“It’s because he knows you’re just going to the toilets to smoke,” Harry rebuffs, and Lee pouts, loading the toaster with some wholemeal for the more demanding and healthy Harry (who will ruin the health benefits of the wholemeal by spreading peanut butter on his toast). “And he’d only believe that you had some kind of pissing disorder if you called it the same thing every time.”

“I don’t know,” George sighs, opening the microwave as it pings. As much as he wants a cup of coffee, it never aids his hangovers, and so he’s opted for hot chocolate instead. “I’m not sure if he’s my type while sober.”

“Do you even have a type? You keep turning everyone down. That’s not how you get a boyfriend, George,” Lee laughs, tilting Harry’s face for a kiss. “Harry’s certainly not my type, but here we are. Maybe he’s better.”

“Lee, you could date anybody and you’d be a cute fucking couple.”

“Because I’m not picky, George.”

“You could do a lot better than Rowan,” Fred points out, jabbing George in the back. “And, because some of us weren’t totally hammered by the time you two were, some of us got to see the looks of love you two were flashing at each other. You kept watching him dancing like you were in a gay film and waiting for someone to pull to a close-up of your face. You like that kid.”

“Freddie, dear, why are you encouraging me to date the hall monitor?”

“Oh, you know, Georgie. Might be helpful for troublemaking purposes. And because I’m a romantic.”

“A romantic who’s never had a girlfriend.”

“I’m not in a hurry,” Fred grins. George wants to say that neither is he, but the image of Rowan’s half-lidded eyes as he sank into George’s kiss makes him stop, and curse taking the party novice under his wing at all.

 **iii.  
**George tries really, really hard not to kiss Rowan.

He’d thought it would be easy. Rowan is Rowan, after all; a tad gawky, studious, takes his job as hall monitor a little too seriously, carries a huge book under his arm. He couldn’t put an outfit together that wasn’t a shirt and chinos if his life depended on it. He trips over his own feet when he’s not paying enough attention. He fanboys about Dickens novels. When George asks him to the movies, Rowan suggests the most arthouse film showing. He eats a sandwich at the back of the theater. He shushes George when he tries to speak during the previews; his knees keep knocking George’s; George sits with his hand on the armrest, and Rowan takes five minutes to raise his hand from his own knee to lay on top of George’s.

And George should like none of these things, in theory.

But when Rowan does them, he does.

“Thanks for coming out with me,” Rowan says, walking surprisingly jauntily down the road, ice cream in hand. George has not opened himself up to opportunity, and bought them both tubs instead of cones. “I know I’m not… I know you don’t really want to be with me. Or see me. But thanks for doing this anyway. I appreciate it.”

“Who said I didn’t want to do this? I could’ve said no.”

“You were drunk when you kissed me, and now you’re sober, and you just look… disappointed. Which is okay. I know I’m not the kind of person you’d want to be with.”

George sighs, pausing in the street and turning to Rowan; they duck towards the shelter of a shopfront to avoid blocking the sidewalk, staring at each under the shade. George is trying to formulate a speech in his head. Rowan is looking expectantly at him, clearly waiting for this speech. He looks like he’s waiting to be let down, and let down hard.

And George has tried hard not to kiss Rowan, but this is the moment he realises it’s what he’s been waiting for.

Rowan doesn’t kiss so well when he’s sober, and overthinking things. But George can feel him smiling, and taste the ice cream on his breath, and when Rowan’s free hand gently clutches at George’s shirt, that doesn’t really matter at all.

* * *

“And did you finish what you started at the party?” Lee asks when Rowan and his friends are out of earshot; Lee is out on the porch, smoking, far away from the rest of his rather minimal party guests except George. He decided to have a smaller party to save himself hiring any more external cleaners, and he thinks he prefers it, if only because he gets to bother each guest individually.

“Like I’m going to tell you and have you bother me about it for all eternity,” George scoffs. “Did I, didn’t I, what does it matter? We’re dating. Isn’t that good enough for you?”

“No. It’s precisely because you’re dating that I need relationship status updates, including every time you get to a new base. I practically update you every time Harry farts in his sleep.”

“And I don’t want to hear about Harry’s farts, thanks. But Rowan’s a bit hesitant about all this, so this is for his sake, not because I’m not desperate to brag to you about how much action I’m getting with him.” George grins, plucking Lee’s cigarette from his hands for a drag, though George isn’t the kind of boy to smoke full-time. He just steals a few. “Don’t be an asshole. He’s a sweetie.”

“I know; I told you,” Lee laughs. “And you were gonna just dump him.”

“Thank God for chivalry, and being handsy at parties.”

* * *

Rowan is being asked exactly the same question, but by Harry, and also trying to dodge the question by drinking and trying to propose any number of games for them to play which Harry always tries to route back to Truth or Dare, leading Rowan to give up and just try and detach himself and go find George, who he eventually tracks down to the kitchen, where he and Lee are bringing out the snacks.

“Brownies?” George suggests, holding up a box and grinning. “Though, you know, I’ve got a couple weed brownies with me. They’re not nostalgic, but they’re very fun.”

Rowan decides that he’ll be experimental, and takes one through with him to Lee’s sitting room, where they’re all gathered around in what’s essentially a glorified circle. Lee has been kinder with alcohol, having less guests to serve: Rowan has a whole bottle of rosé to himself, which makes him feel slightly more sophisticated than beer in a cup (though Lee’s promised to mix him up a Bloody Mary again later), which he sips at elegantly with his brownie. George sits at his side, with a gin and tonic, and occasionally rests his hand on Rowan’s knee, which makes Rowan blush, still.

They, thankfully, don’t really play any party games - nor do they do many party activities at all, except dance and sing along to a few classics. Mostly, they talk; they’ve kept to their own friend groups in school, and this is the first time that George’s and Rowan’s have mingled like this, so freely. They bat questions back and forth: why Tonks dyes her hair so often, how did Lee get so good at saxophone, why is Rowan such an uptight hall monitor, how did Harry and Lee get together. The occasion is sweet, giggly as they all descend into varying states of being drunk and high, and the best part-

they can all stay overnight at Lee’s.

Before bed, they play board games: Scrabble, Cluedo, Monopoly, Connect 4. Rowan is an unexpected beast, dominating most of these games; Fred snatches up Cluedo at the last minute, though, and after successfully bankrupting both Tonks and Barnaby on Mayfair, Harry is declared victor of Monopoly. Connect 4 is always anybody’s game.

That’s when an unofficial bedtime breaks out: Tonks and Penny leave, having various family affairs to attend to the next day, and Rowan and George go to get their pick of a bedroom. There’s not enough bed space to avoid having people sleep on floors, but nobody wants to ruin the privacy of their favourite new power couple.

“George,” says Rowan softly, on their way up the stairs. “Do you want to finish what we started at the party last time?”

George pauses, and turns round. “Yeah,” he grins. “If you want. And if you’re not drunk.”

“I think I’m high,” Rowan says quizzically. “Should we not do it because I’m high? Because it might be better now that I’m high.”

“We can give it a try. So long as you promise we don’t tell anyone, and leave them hanging.”

Rowan giggles. “Promise,” he says, jutting his pinkie out and wrapping it round George’s, sinking into George for a kiss as they back blindly for the door.

Rowan’s glad he tried parties.

George is glad he didn’t listen to himself, and kissed the stupid hall monitor.


	19. Fantastic (Newt x Credence)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's only a freaking howl's moving castle au!! yay!

Credence always hears it before he sees it: the castle groans and whines, the joints of its patchwork foundation wheezing as it walks, its chicken-like legs struggling to hold up the piled-on castle above it. He’d tried counting the months when it appeared, but it never has rhythm or agenda: it’s just  _there_ , wandering past, and sometimes it stops to squat by the lake on the outskirts of town, and he wants to run for it, run up the tiny staircase he sees protruding from the front door and join the menagerie of oddballs he sees by the water or standing out on the balconies, abandon the church and his Ma and his sisters and finally meet the wizard Newt for himself.

He keeps a bag packed under his bed, just in case. He keeps it blocked off from view with stacks of Bibles and leaflets he hasn’t yet handed out, and he updates the selection of crackers and non-perishables when he can, stuffing his bag full of contraband novels, and he  _waits_ ; he waits until next he’ll hear the creaking of Newt’s castle, and he waits, and he waits.

He misses it once, because he’s being kept inside.  _Grounded_ , his Ma said, after he was late home from school because he’d stayed behind in class to ask a question, and the regret boils him inside. He knows there was nothing he could do, and yet it eats at him, day after day; he waits, and listens for the sound he knows too well.

And he waits. And he waits.

And in the haze of a warm Monday afternoon, as he’s sitting doing his homework with air breezing in through his cracked-open window, he hears the castle. It’s the most distinctive noise he’s ever heard, the sound of everything under the pressure of a storm, and the sound is incredible, crushing and whining before it suddenly  _stops_  with a satisfying hiss; that’s the noise of it settling, Credence knows, and yet he hadn’t heard its approach at all.

It strikes him for a moment; the thought that the castle can  _fly_.

But he’s not going to ask questions now: he grabs his bag, and stuffs in the bars of chocolate he’d smuggled home from the cafeteria, and opens the window all the way. He’s just small enough from his limited diet to squeeze through, the soles of his boots touching down and scrabbling on the weak wood of their near-collapsing roof; the purchase is poor, but Credence is determined, slowly sliding his way down and trying to ignore the amplified noise of every time he jams his foot into a gap for hold as he lowers himself over the end of the roof, dropping himself with care.

The land is still a sudden impact, and shockwaves jolt up his legs: but he has no time, he knows, and he runs with his jelly-legged limp, the makeshift castle a landmark of hope in the distance. It’s a fair way away, but he knows that someone might be in pursuit, and people from the church might be watching – hell, they probably know he’s been planning to escape, they probably anticipate these kinds of things and have measures in place to trap him and keep him, and he knows that he can’t let up.

He speeds through the winds of the town streets, keeping close to corners and his eyes on the prize: he can’t give up now. He knows he’ll be beaten relentlessly and ruthlessly, and he can’t take it anymore: he’s desperate for this freedom, now that it’s in sight, no matter how weak he feels or how much his lungs feel like they’ll give out or how sore his legs are or how his bones feel as if they’ve been electrocuted with every stomp of his foot to the ground.

He’s running. He’s going to be free.

The castle shrieks with tension as it rises, whining as a part of it falls off from the top; Credence can see someone emerging onto the balcony, screwdriver between their teeth as they heave themselves up with the embittered determination of an engineer, and with renewed vigour to be a part of this and a part of  _something_  that’s more than his stupid church and his abusive family, he reaches the castle, throws himself at the elevated stairs, and pulls himself to his feet.

He has to creep in through the door, careful not to fall from the withdrawn staircase, but he makes it, and as the door shuts behind him, a thought occurs to him:

Credence Barebone is now free.

Fuck, he doesn’t even need to call himself  _Credence Barebone_.

It’s dark, first: the only source of light in the corridor is a flickering and waning lamp on the wall that eventually sputters out as Credence makes his way across the floorboards, which sing out notes like they’re on an electric piano: he pauses to marvel, trying out each different board to hear its note, entirely and blissfully unaware of the cacophony he’s creating as he approaches the end of the corridor. It branches into two doors and a spiral staircase, and one of the doors is open, light spilling through it, so Credence ventures through and up a few wooden stairs into a room that seems to be the kitchen and dining room combined.

It’s a marvel of a room: there’s a door in it that leads to the outside world, but straight outside, and as such someone would simply fall out of the castle if they stepped out, but the door is half a window and helps to serve the purpose of gushing light in: the room is full of massive windows and it’s spectacularly bright, lifting Credence’s spirit immediately. Indeed, he ignores the piles of unwashed dishes and clamorous clutter of the kitchen in favour of watching the clouds outside and admiring the dining table, around which are multiple chairs and a cheerfully rotund man is enjoying a lunch of beans on toast.

“Hey,” the man says, greeting Credence like an old friend. “Want some lunch, pal?”

Credence’s stomach rumbles loudly in response. “Oh, please, that would be lovely,” he says, taking a seat as the man rises to cut some slices of bread.

“How about a cheese toastie?” he asks, and Credence makes a noise that sounds enough like a ‘yes’ for the man to pop some slices of cheddar on top of the bread before placing them on a grate inside a grumbling fireplace; Credence swears it’s  _literally_  grumbling, as he hears a mutter of complaint as his lunch cooks. “I better make lunch for old Abernathy up on the roof, too.”

“Absolutely not,” says the fireplace, and to Credence’s starting surprise, a small fire emerges between the slices of toasting bread: a fire with a  _face_ , a grumpy one with extreme eyebrows of crimson flame and a look of scandal. “I don’t know why I let you people cook with me at all. I should tell Newt.”

“Hey, come on, Graves, pal. We just want to have some lunch,” the man pleads. “He’s doing you a favour, up there, keeping the castle from falling apart.”

“Yeah, well, I’m a fire demon, not your personal servant,” the fire, Graves, grumbles. The round man flashes a slightly cheeky grin at Credence, and there’s something in the homeliness of that grin that makes Credence feel, very suddenly and strikingly, like this is the place he was always meant to be, and that he finally and effortlessly  _belongs_.

And lunch is served.

-

A charming girl called Queenie takes it upon herself to show Credence around and she finds him a nice room with a small square-shaped balcony that he can stand on and do little else with; she introduces him to everyone, even the man on the roof screwing the castle back together whose name is Abernathy and who doesn’t respond in words for the screwdriver in his mouth, but who makes a noise of affirmation anyway.

Newt’s room is essentially in the centre of the castle, and that’s where Credence meets him first. He doesn’t know what he ever expected of Newt or of his room, but this isn’t it: Newt is incredibly unassuming, a freckled man with sparkling eyes and hair that shines a little gingery in the light, and he’s writing neatly in a journal at his desk, which is littered with plants and old tins of soup repurposed as pen holders. His room is incredible, full of gleaming orbs of light that keep alive his menagerie of plants that are twinned only by the small creatures that amass themselves in his room, from creatures that look like sticks to one that reminds Credence of an animal he’d seen in a book called a platypus.

If Credence had been expecting flash and glitter, he’s pleasantly surprised to find this quiet beauty instead: Newt smiles at him, getting up to greet him. “Ah, you must be a new addition to our little team here.”

“Ah, yes,” Credence says shyly. “I-I’d like to stay here, if that’s okay.”

Newt pauses for a moment, his round and shining eyes considering Credence. “Of course you can stay. Queenie wouldn’t be introducing you if you were just passing through.” Newt smiles for a moment, a wary smile that suggests he maybe thinks more of Credence than Credence might ever think of himself. “I have to get back to my writing, so I’m afraid that this is just a brief introduction. It’s nice to meet you, Credence.”

Credence nods, though even when Queenie leads him on to the next part of the sprawling castle complex, which occasionally shifts and moves at random (at Graves’s will, apparently), he can’t stop thinking about Newt, about his gentle demeanour and the twinkle in his eye, like a true wizard.

-

When Credence wakes during the night, it takes him a few moments to realise he’s not dreaming; in fact, he’s not convinced until he tries all his dream tests – he pinches himself, tries again, and then opens up a page of one of his books, but the words are all perfectly real and legible and make sense. The castle is peculiar in the night: moonlight seems to filter through his windows and lights a dusty haze in his bedroom, and he sits up, reaching out for a moment and letting the light touch his hand, which is pale and soft, the shadows hiding his calluses.

He gets up and ventures slowly along the stairs, letting his feet carry him: he doesn’t really remember where everything is, and he certainly can’t see enough in the dark to make out the places that he  _does_  know. He hears noise in the distance, and it sounds surprisingly like music: but he can’t imagine who would be playing music in the middle of the night, and so he cautiously follows the sound, his hands trailing across the walls and his fingers picking up dust.

He comes out into the kitchen, which is surprisingly bright, lit up with orbs floating around the room, each emanating warm light. Newt is sitting by the fireplace, talking in soft tones to Graves; by him is a gramophone, spinning a record full of fuzzy-sounding pianos and accordions, and there’s an aura to him that’s so much more relaxed than usual, his sleeves loose and his top buttons undone. His chest is freckled, too, ever so lightly, and he’s laughing as he talks to Graves, his entire face lighting up as he beams.

Credence isn’t sure he’s seen anything so beautiful before, and he’s not really sure what’s going on, but his stomach feels strange, and stranger so as Newt looks up and sees him, their eyes catching.

“Hello, Credence,” he says gently. “What are you doing up?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” he replies, shifting; he doesn’t know whether or not to sit down, and Newt’s gaze on him makes him feel yet shier. “I’m not very good at sleeping.”

“No,” Newt nods, sympathetic. “Nor am I. I think a little too much to sleep.” He turns, pulling over one of the stools from the dining table and invites Credence to sit. “Graves and I were just discussing where we should go next. I’m not very sure. I think I’d like to see a little more of the world. What do you think?”

“I think that carrying this rustbucket across the ocean is going to be the death of me,” Graves complains.

“Maybe we should do something about the castle first,” Credence concedes. “It does seem a little… rickety.”

Newt laughs, so loudly that it startles Credence a little; it’s a boyish and boisterous laugh, so at odds with his reserved speaking voice. He feels like he’s unlocked something in Newt as the man wipes his brow for a moment, mouth caught in a grin. “Yes. That’s what we should do. I think this castle is long in need of redecorating, don’t you, Graves?”

“Tell me about it,” Graves grumbles, his ember eyes glancing over to Credence. “I like this kid. He’s got big ideas. Nobody else would suggest anything that stupid.”

“Stupid?” Credence inquires, leaning in and staring goggle-eyed at Graves; he’s still a marvel, and yet a surprisingly small one – it’s almost impossible to believe that such a small creature holds up the entire castle and moves it with his own will, and that such a powerful creature would at any level bend to Newt’s will; but maybe that last part  _is_  believable. Newt isn’t anyone, after all. “W-what’s stupid about it?”

Graves shrugs verbally. “Oh, it’s just a very small castle made of very conveniently fit together component parts that aren’t at all hard to clean or move, and Newt’s a  _fantastic_  wizard.”

“Do you have to slight me at every available opportunity?” Newt sighs, but he grins; Credence has never known such a friendship, of a wizard and a demon who crack insulting jokes back and forth and who seem almost symbiotic, but this castle is wonderful, and strange, and he feels as if he could be friends with anyone here.

“I think we can do it,” Credence says, and he’s determined.

-

Credence isn’t wrong.

It just takes them half a year.

They keep on moving throughout the country, which makes it exceedingly difficult to move the component parts of the castle; but Newt is a wizard and Queenie and Tina are his apprentices and Abernathy determinedly doesn’t fall off, and Credence deep cleans the castle with such vigour that he swears he peels back entire generations of dust. He unravels a whole history in hidden and tucked-away rooms, a history of musty old books and strange jazz and piano records and Newt’s old bestiaries and letters from Newt’s old friends and acquaintances, all left in fused-together drawers, gently forgotten old memories that Newt fawns over when Credence re-introduces them to him.

Newt spends most of his time in his room, but it’s always open to Credence, and sometimes they just talk for hours about anything; Credence likes to sit on Newt’s rocking chair and look up at his star-painted ceiling, and Newt sits at his desk, drawing and drinking cups of tea.

And it’s so simple, and yet there’s nowhere else Credence would rather be.

He introduces Credence, after a few weeks, to the locked door by his room: the door doesn’t look like any of the others, painted light green and stencilled with white leaves, with a shiny brass doorknob and no sign of the lock that keeps it sealed shut – but there’s no lock, in the end: Newt shifts his hand and the door clicks open, a breeze flowing through it and out into the corridor.

“This is my work,” he says, stepping through and onto a paved road: Credence suspends his disbelief as he joins Newt. He’s seen a lot of things in his few weeks, and he tries to hold in his surprise as he looks around, realising the depth of the room: because it’s not a  _room_. The door leads out into a field connected to a patchwork of entirely different ecosystems of field, and between them, animals of the like he’s never seen and might never see again mill back and forth – hell, Credence doesn’t even have  _words_ , and so he chooses instead to say none and bask. “And I’d like to introduce it to you, because I’d like you as my assistant, Credence.”

It takes Credence more than a moment for those words to sink in.

“Really?” he asks, slowly. “M-me?”

“That’s why I brought you here,” Newt replies. “You’re very observant, and neat, and I think that you would be a great help here. You don’t have to help me out all the time, of course – you can keep helping with the remodelling, too, if you’d like, but I would very much appreciate a helping hand.”

Credence blushes.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll help.”

-

Life in the castle becomes a joy that way – Credence splits his time between feeding Newt’s menagerie of unusual creatures and taking care of them, and helping Queenie, Tina, and Jacob redecorate or clear out rooms for Graves to remove or change. Newt’s life is surprisingly entangled with the creatures: he spends most of his own time observing them and taking notes to compile into a book, and he’s always there to help Credence and offer soft words of reassurance when Credence worries that he’s messed up. He’s at home here where he maybe isn’t in a castle that’s become slightly too old and creaky.

“Newt,” he asks one day when he’s flinging out pellets for the happy bouncing Mooncalves (they’re his favourites: he’s nervous that the other animals could hurt him, and yet there’s nothing dangerous-looking about their big eyes), “why does Graves do what you want him to do?”

“We made a deal a long time ago,” Newt says softly, glancing up from the sketch he’s been doing of the dozing Niffler, tucked away in its cubbyhole of stolen pennies and magpie-snatched artefacts. “Our magic is linked because he’s in possession of my heart.”

Credence pauses to turn, only to realise that, several moments later, a dozen Mooncalf eyes are beadily trained on him, and he returns to throwing them food. “Your heart? But – how is that possible?”

“A lot of things are possible,” Newt shrugs. “If you look in the right places.”

“Like here?”

Newt laughs. “Like here.”

“I’m glad I’m here,” Credence whispers, so suddenly that he’s not even sure he’s said it until he registers Newt’s eyes staring back at him, milky; if Credence didn’t know better, he’d say that Newt was touched, but Newt loves the world and he’s seen that look everywhere from an Occamy hatching to  _Wouldn’t It Be Nice_  playing through the gramophone, and there’s nothing special about sentiment in the eyes of a sentimental man.

His voice cracks when he speaks, though, and it stops Credence’s heart. “I’m glad, too.”

-

Every time Credence can’t sleep, he heads through to the kitchen; and almost every time, Newt is there, half-asleep over a cup of tea, and makes some more for Credence. When he’s tired, Credence notes that Newt likes to watch the world outside the window: either the wind blowing through the grass, or the town and cityscapes that wander past.

It’s better being up in the early hours with someone else, and Credence swears that Newt mumbles something to that effect one night, and he nods back.

-

Credence doesn’t even know what time of year it is when the castle settles for a few days on the beach by a port town, but the slightly bitter wind reads winter to him, and so he borrows one of Jacob’s coats to go out in and sits huddled in its fabric in the sand, knees to his chin as he watches the breeze scoop the sea.

He doesn’t move as Abernathy sits next to him, his cheek blackened with some kind of soot or oil; Credence doesn’t know, and Abernathy doesn’t care. He’s happy when he’s making himself useful, and if that means being covered in soot, so be it; Credence thinks sometimes that Abernathy would explode if he wasn’t working, but when he expresses this idea to Newt, Newt shakes his head slowly.

“He wouldn’t,” Newt had observed. “He just doesn’t think he’s worth enough to have his own hobbies and interests, so he works.”

“I liked Newt once, too,” Abernathy says softly.

Credence turns his head. “What happened?”

“He’s fantastic, and I’ll never be.”

Credence reaches out and puts his hand on top of Abernathy’s, his fingers curling around Abernathy’s warm and beaten palm. He can feel a heartbeat through the lines that run through Abernathy’s hands, and it’s unsteady, unsure of where to be. He’s soft underneath. Quiet.

“What does it mean to be fantastic?” Credence asks. Abernathy pauses for a few moments, beats passing like the tide lapping at their feet.

“I think it’s when you see the world the way it’s meant to be seen,” he answers.

And he doesn’t elaborate, because that’s the moment that Mary Lou Barebone wrenches Graves from the fireplace, Newt’s heart with him, and the castle shrieks and collapses. Abernathy yelps, dragging Credence out of the way of his own balcony as it smashes into the sands, propelling some of Credence’s books out through the open window and splaying them across the damp; they run with abandon, their feet scraping up gusts of sand as they make a break for the stairs that bridge the beach from the boardwalk.

They make it just in time to avoid the rest of the castle as its bowels groan and drop like stones onto the shore, the wreckage horribly still as it stops, the joints keeping the different sections of the castle together whining loudly.

“We have to help everyone,” Credence says; he doesn’t stop to feel surprised in his own authoritativeness, because, for once, he’s not overthinking – he’s not even sure he’s  _thinking_  as he pushes open the door, shoving himself into the corridor: this part of the castle is still upright, holding its own determinedly as he rushes into the kitchen, and the scene before him is nothing but chaos. Mary Lou is holding Graves and her hands are burning but he’s spitting and fizzling away; Newt is nowhere to be seen, but Queenie and Tina are holding the fort in his stead – Queenie is holding a wand to Mary Lou, her face turned in an uncharacteristically vicious and protective frown, and Tina is holding a frying pan like a woman possessed; if it were Credence in Mary Lou’s place, just the sight of the two sisters would terrify him into submission, but his own mother’s never been so nervous.

“Ma,” Credence pleads; he needn’t find the words, because she knows what he means. He knows what she’s come to do, and that’s to destroy everything he loves.

“Foul wizard,” she hisses, and in the moment she turns to look at him, Tina slams her elbow into the side of her face and Mary Lou drops Graves; on instinct, Credence shoots out, and catches him.

-

The whole world blacks out for a moment.

The darkness opens out onto a field: it’s warm, the sky pure blue and unburdened by clouds, and beneath his feet is a jungle of brightly coloured flowers that bounce right back up even after he steps on them, standing proud in their vivid rainbow. In the distance, Credence can see some of Newt’s creatures: the Graphorns are speeding around in playful chase, and the Diricawls are teleporting themselves around with glee, and above his head the Thunderbird is soaring, cruising the gentle wind he creates.

In the middle of the field is Newt, sitting curled up. Credence joins him.

“I’ve died, haven’t I?” Newt asks, sounding almost exasperated by the thought, as if death is just an inconvenience.

“I don’t think so,” Credence replies, reaching over and sliding his hand into Newt’s. Now isn’t the time to be anxious, or to overthink every decision. Now, he knows, is the time for him to trust his heart. “I’m still here.”

“I can see my family home across that river,” Newt says, pointing – Credence follows to the sight of an idyllic town house, the fence blocking out its garden overrun with ivy and its once beautiful bushes and flowers grown out to possess the walls, creating a second structure on top of the first. “Empty now, of course. We all moved somewhere else. My parents never approved of me, and so I thought that the best place to go would be everywhere else.”  _The castle_ , thinks Credence. It makes sense. “Graves and I struck up a deal when I was still a teenager, but even this castle never felt better. The more layers we piled on, the more I felt as if I were hiding from the way I feel, and hiding from the others in the castle. I let people come and go, of course – they often don’t cause a bother – but even those who have stayed and made a concerted effort to be my friend, I still just hide, in the end. From my parents, from my friends, and from myself.”

Credence doesn’t have an answer to that.

His intuition does, and it beats his conscious thoughts to action: he places his hands on Newt’s flushed cheeks, and kisses him. He’s never kissed anyone before, and feels his own inexperience as he flusters; but Newt shifts his legs so that they’re not pulled up and lets Credence settle into the space that he’s created, and he kisses back. He’s slow, careful, tender: Credence melts into him, and for a while after they part, Credence sits with his head on Newt’s shoulder as Newt massages rhythms onto his back, songs that only he can hear.

“I’m sorry,” says Credence.

“For what?”

“Everything.”

“Credence, please don’t apologise like that. I’ve been the happiest I’ve been in a long time with you around, and the idea of renovating the castle – that’s just what I need to do. I can’t hide in hidden dusty rooms my whole life.” He runs a hand through Credence’s hair, mumbling a soft comment about how it’s beautiful now that it’s grown, no sign left of his old bowl cut edges. “And if you’re sorry for kissing me, don’t be. If you hadn’t, then who knows if I would ever have mustered the courage?”

Credence wants to kiss him again, and again, and get lost in Newt’s arms in this field forever. He looks into Newt’s eyes for the moment that their respective anxieties can bear.

“We have to go back,” he says.

“I need my heart first,” Newt reminds him gently.

Credence doesn’t remember putting Newt’s heart, a strange magical form of a thing, in his pocket, but he reaches instinctively there for it: when he touches it, he can hear the sounds of Queenie shrieking with rage and Tina and Jacob panicking as they try to retrieve Graves, and he can hear the sound of the castle again beginning to give way, with little magic left to hold it up. He feels like it’s forever away, and he slowly presses Newt’s heart to his chest and watches it sink in.

He’s beginning to think that nothing is impossible anymore, from demons in fire to enchanted hearts to Newt Scamander loving him back.

He holds Newt’s hand as the field crumbles away from them.

-

Credence doesn’t remember what happens after that: it’s a blur of falling debris and shouting and Newt scrabbling to get Graves to a grate and ignite him again, and the world is still spinning from all the commotion, and Credence is only really conscious again when he wakes up in his bedroom.

And the world outside is moving, and his balcony is still there, and everything could’ve been a dream. His sheets have been changed, and they smell like lilies, and his books have been sorted back into his bedside table, and everything has been dusted and organised neatly into place. He even has plants on his windowsill: a pot of ivy, some cacti, a Chinese evergreen. There’s a small tree in one of the corners that Bowtruckles squeak on, and he sits up slowly, swinging his legs around the side of his bed.

The sun shining in through the window reminds Credence of the field, and he watches the sky, spellbound. The past feels like it was years ago, like a long-ago dream he once sad, and his heart swims for a moment in the warmth of the nostalgia.

“Oh, sweetie, you’re finally awake!” Queenie coos, beaming. “I’ll get you some cocoa. Is that okay?”

Dazed, he nods, waiting on the edge of his bed for her to return; she’s quick, despite the fact that she layers his cocoa with tiny marshmallows and cream and sprinkles, and puts it into a mug printed with a little black cat for him. He sips at the cream.

“Did all of that happen?” he asks.

“Sure it did,” says Queenie. “It was crazy – but you did amazing, Credence! You saved Newt.” She grins at him, placing her hand on his shoulder and giving it a reassuring squeeze. “You saved all of us.”

Credence isn’t sure he’s saved anyone, but he nods, letting Queenie show him around the castle all over again: it’s completely different, no longer a labyrinth of dark and musty corridors with doors that lead to nowhere or rooms that nobody uses but a bright and open space with wide corridors and brightly painted doors and more windows, the furniture dusted and painted in bright colours. The fireplace in the kitchen is gone, replaced with a grate that Graves sits and chews up logs on. Jacob is making lunch again, this time in better and improved equipment, laid out in a more open space, with a stove.

“Hello, Graves,” Credence says, crouching to his level; he’s used to Graves’s grumpiness, not him humming along to a song in his head and looking almost  _cheery_. “I thought you would’ve left.”

Graves laughs, spitting embers. “Me too, but I guess not. That Abernathy has a real way with words, when he’s speaking and not busy constructing damn bookcases or something. And I don’t suppose I know what I’d do if I  _weren’t_  here. There aren’t that many groups of misfits looking to adopt fire demons.”

“So you aren’t connected to Newt anymore?”

“No. We separated when you disappeared off with his heart and I was left here. So, there you go: you freed him, and he still has this place, and now we’re going to cross the sea and go on fun adventures – or, knowing Newt, adventures that are simultaneously very fun and incredibly dangerous. He doesn’t know any other kind.”

“He’s fantastic,” Credence says, offhandedly, and Graves snorts a lick of flame that almost scorches Credence’s shirt.

“So I’ve heard.”

-

Newt doesn’t leave his room for another few days, and Credence spends one of those days out in town with Queenie, Tina, and Jacob. He misses Newt, but there’s something that feels so much calmer now: he always felt as if he belongs, but now he feels as if he  _really_  does – he really feels like he’s been there for as long as life, and he’s not sure he even remembers what it was like before he spent his days on the balcony as the countryside disappeared past him on some kind of neverending voyage.

He stops off at a record shop and picks one up that he remembers having heard before. When he asks Queenie where they get their money from, she just smiles and says “you don’t think Newt’s the only person to have ever lived in that castle, do you?”, and Credence decides not to question it, because the world is full of oddities and he’d get bogged down if he asked questions of all of them.

He’s listening to Martha Reeves’s rendition of  _Then He Kissed Me_ , having pulled the gramophone into his own room temporarily, when the door creaks open and Newt appears in the frame. He’s not the steadiest on his legs, but he’s dressed himself in a shirt and trousers and a pair of socks with a hole in the big toe, which he’s been wearing stubbornly for months, insistent on not throwing them out as he likes the dragon pattern.

“Hello,” he says sleepily, rubbing his eyes. “I like the music.”

Credence isn’t much one for making small talk, considering his inability at it, and so he leaps to his feet and throws his arms around Newt: Newt, Newt,  _his_  Newt, all floppy hair and bashful smiles and freckles and easy kisses, and Credence kisses him until he feels as if he’s done it too much and is robbing Newt’s lips.

“If I could wake up to this every day,” he says, “that would be very nice.” He disentangles himself from Credence’s arms to take a seat on the bed, and he laughs until he starts to cough. “Oh, dear. I maybe got up a little early. But I wanted to see you, and to make sure you were okay.”

“I’m okay,” Credence nods. “I’m okay.”

“Good,” says Newt, and, in time, falls asleep on Credence’s bed.

-

It takes him another week to recover, the better part of which he spends with Credence, who insists on bringing him food and water and who tidies up Newt’s room, which conveniently missed the tidying-up and remodelling attempts, and so Credence takes it upon himself to do it all himself, which amuses Newt to no end as he watches Credence lovingly decorate his room and fill it with all the little objects and artefacts and books that Newt loves the most.

The minute he’s well enough to, Newt gets up and puts his waistcoat over his shirt and heads through to the kitchen. “Graves,” he says, doing up his buttons, “I think it’s about time we crossed the ocean, don’t you?”

“I think we’re long overdue some continent-hopping,” Graves says. “Get up there, Newt.”

“Roger that,” Newt says, and reaches over to grab Credence’s hand; he barrels up the stairs, all the way up the spiral staircase and through the door that never opened and never left at the top, and they emerge onto the uppermost balcony of the castle, one that gives them a view of everything: the town they’re about to leave, the vast stretch of sea they’re going to fly over, the whole castle, bright and colourful and held together with tough metal stitches.

The castle lifts off the ground, and Newt’s grip tightens, and Credence’s heart lifts as the world opens itself out before him: Newt, the animals, the globe.


	20. Disaster Boy (Graves x Credence)

Credence crashes into the side of Ilvermorny in the winter of 1926, and, as Head Boy, it’s Graves’s responsibility to take care of him. Credence doesn’t take well to authority: not only the school board, but even less so to the MACUSA officials, and though he refuses to say a word to Graves, the fact that he isn’t trying to murder Graves is a start. Abernathy is cleared out of Graves’s dorm room, and Credence moves in with nothing to his name but a complementary uniform from Headmistress Picquery. 

He isn’t half as talkative as Abernathy; but it means that he isn’t anywhere near as annoying. Credence keeps to himself entirely, spending his time reading various textbooks or Muggle fiction. He confides in Graves one night that he isn’t very good at reading, that his Ma only taught him enough to scrape by. Graves reads to him, Credence’s eyes wandering the wordscapes and taking in as much new information as possible. It’s the first time he talks to Graves beyond exchanging names, and it soon becomes a nightly ritual, after dinner. 

Credence accompanies Graves to every meal of the day except for lunch, which is brought to Credence by one of the house-elves. Graves doesn’t intend to abandon his social rituals for Credence, and rather hopes that it’ll give Credence the chance to socialise, so he continues to sit with his friends. Queenie makes conversation every evening with Credence; she isn’t put off by his monosyllabic answers, by his inability to even look up at her. Graves wishes he could be anything like her. Sometimes he feels detached. 

It is with Queenie’s help that Graves begins to draw Credence from his shell. It’s a particularly cold day mid-December when he catches Credence shivering in his shirt-sleeves, and offers him his old Quodpot sweater. It takes him almost two hours of negotiation before he finally succeeds: Credence pulls the jumper over his head, and Graves almost has to look away. He looks so sweet in it, the sleeves drifting over his knuckles. It’s so easy to forget that Credence is dangerous, and Graves begins to wonder if there’s a difference between dangerous and scared, and if MACUSA knows that difference. 

Beyond that, Graves starts taking Credence into the common room. Though Graves is technically a Thunderbird, Pukwudgie are a kind house with no qualms about who they let in, and he lets himself in one weekend for Gobstones with Newt and Queenie, who take it in turns to teach Credence how to play. He’s no good - Gobstones is a game of experience as much as anything else - but he seems to enjoy it. He smiles, and Graves even hears him laugh: a gentle sound, but one with presence, like the ringing of church bells. In the moment, Credence seems to have found peace. 

“I’ll miss you,” he says, the day before Graves is due to go home for Christmas. Graves’s heart lurches. If it were up to him, he wouldn’t leave at all. 

He gets a cushy Christmas in the family manor, and Credence gets weeks of interrogation by officials. 

“Don’t miss me too much,” Graves says. “I’ll be back.”

* * *

He’s caught up by Picquery just before school resumes. Over the festive break, MACUSA has decided that the safest method of handling Credence would be to teach him to channel his powers in one-to-one lessons; and on the other hand, they hoped to remove his obscurus altogether by letting him form the bonds of friendship in his dorm and also by enrolling in less spell-orientated classes such as Herbology and History of Magic, all of which he would have with students he identified as friends. Graves is surprised to hear that the Congress have been reasonable. 

“The Scamanders made a real push for kind treatment,” Picquery says. “They brought it up with the Ministry in Britain, and with that kind of pressure on MACUSA after the mess of his initial discovery, they acquiesced. So you have Newt to thank.” 

Graves passes his thanks on to Newt, who refers them further to Theseus, but who also flushes gently. 

Credence has been sorted into Pukwudgie, according to his new and embroidered uniform (which also accommodates for Credence’s healthy weight gain). Graves chuckles to himself as he walks into their dorm room, and Credence looks at him, seeming distinctly worried. 

“What?” he asks.

“Pukwudgies are usually social,” Graves says. He wonders if Credence will take offence, but he smiles, letting out a short laugh; and Graves feels a little more relaxed. The world is always alright when he’s able to coax a laugh. 

He has History of Magic with Credence, and Newt and Queenie have Herbology and Divination with him respectively. History of Magic is generally Graves’s driest subject, but Credence seems to throw himself into learning, asking Graves for help with his supplementary reading. Credence is allowed to work at a more casual pace, but he doesn’t shirk: Graves sometimes doesn’t see him immediately after classes, and hears from Newt that it’s because Credence is staying behind to learn more and help out in the greenhouses - and soon enough, Credence starts to bring cuttings of plants home, growing them on the windowsill of their dorm room. He remains quiet, shy by heart, but Graves watches him engage with life at Ilvermorny, ignoring the threat of his obscurus and the pressure of MACUSA for him to successfully reform. He seems to be engaged, simply, in progressing at his own pace. 

For a boy who crashed into Ilvermorny and wiped out about half of the Wampus dorm a few months ago, Graves thinks Credence is doing pretty well. A testament to the Scamanders, he hopes, and to their humanitarian push. 

Graves has done well at sorting out Credence, so far.

Sorting himself out is another matter entirely. 

* * *

 

Easter comes and goes. Credence’s dependence on Graves is rapidly decreasing, and though Graves knows he should be happy for his friend, he can’t help but feel a slight pang of jealousy and loneliness. He’s jealous of Credence’s independence, he supposes. He misses the time they spent together. Credence doesn’t need Graves anymore, and so they don’t spend as many evenings together. It leaves Graves with too much time on his hands. 

It leaves him open.

Open to Abernathy coming over, both unable to look Graves in the eye and demanding to know why Graves seems to be pretending that they never had a relationship. Open to Graves admitting that he feels a little lost in his own skin, that he feels like he’s wandering a predestined path that he didn’t get the luxury of deciding. He admits that he doesn’t know if the push of his family into an Auror job is what he wants. 

He admits he used the opportune arrival of Credence to avoid the issues. Avoid worrying for days on end if where he was going was where he wanted to be. He didn’t have to worry about himself when there was someone else to worry about. 

Abernathy says he knows that Graves likes Credence, knows that he is an afterthought. (He has never been an afterthought.) But despite it, he touches his hands to Graves’s cheeks. 

Abernathy touches and he feels like the surface of the sun, and he kisses Graves. “I’d always be here for you,” he says. “You know that.” 

As he leaves, Credence steps in from behind the door. He says nothing, just waters his plants and sits down to read, and Graves doesn’t know if he wants Credence to speak or not. The silence hangs heavy in the air. 

_ You can’t control him _ , Graves tells himself. But sometimes he wishes he could just peer inside Credence’s mind, and hear what he’s thinking.

* * *

 

“What did he mean when he said you like me?”

Graves sometimes wonders if Credence experiences time differently, if he’s immortal or has the lifespan of a faerie. It’s been days since Abernathy came over, days for Graves to painstakingly mull over the conversation and wonder if he should accept the fate of his parents, become an Auror and kiss Abernathy behind closed doors at the Magical Congress when nobody’s looking and make do with that life. But Credence feels like an opportunity, a chance for Graves to be something  _ more _ . If Credence can start rebuilding his life, then who’s to say that Graves can’t? 

“What do you think he meant?” Graves asks. 

“I don’t know,” Credence says. “Do you like me like - he likes you?” 

The honest answer that pops into Graves’s mind like the crack of thunder is  _ yes _ . But he shouldn’t. He’s meant to be the responsible Prefect, the Head Boy, some official face for Ilvermorny kindness. There’s no room for his personal feelings when he’s meant to be an ambassador. So he just looks back at Credence. 

“I like you,” Credence says. “I know I’m not supposed to. I feel like I’m not good enough.” 

“You’re a better man than me,” Graves says, and shifts his weight away a little - but Credence is firm, a little truer to himself. Graves suspects that Queenie has been teaching him well: in response to her legilimency, she’s become somewhat of an expert in interpersonal relations. And she’s bold. She sticks up for what she believes in. Credence clearly does, too.

“That’s not true,” Credence says. “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. And then you helped me learn things, and helped me with class. I’m sorry I’ve been at the greenhouses. I didn’t mean to make you lonely.” 

He takes a step forward, and then another, again until he’s right in front of Graves: and with superhuman confidence, he puts his arms lightly around Graves. He’s surprisingly warm: a little firecracker, Graves always thinks. Or maybe Credence has a slumbering dragon in his chest. 

“We can work things out together,” Credence urges as Graves returns the hug, Credence nuzzling his shoulder. He doesn’t know, yet, the full weight of what he’s saying; he doesn’t know about the Graves family name, the pressure, the worry, the feeling as if he’s about to stumble into the wrong life. But Credence looks determined, and his arms are tight round Graves’s chest. 

Graves did not expect the boy he rescued to be rescuing him - and yet, it feels comfortably fitting. 


	21. Rehearsals (Ron x Neville x Blaise)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Secret Santa gift for rose-grangerweasleyisbae on Tumblr for the hptriadsnet gift exchange. Happy holidays!

Neville has never kissed anybody before.

Neville has, in fact, never even given much thought to his sexuality before; but the script in front of him dictates that he’s going to have to kiss Blaise, and he can’t say that he even particularly feels negatively about it. He’s just nervous because no doubt Blaise is a fantastic and experienced kisser, and Neville is a wet blanket.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Ron says. “It’s not  _ that  _ hard.”

Neville is not so convinced. He keeps stuttering over his lines that stray too close to the stage direction  _ they kiss _ ; Blaise shoots him a look every time as if knowingly, which serves only to make Neville chatter horribly through all of his reads. In fact, by the time Blaise deems them ready to move on to standing up and staging, Neville has probably proven himself only as a woefully incompetent actor worthy of nothing. He knew he should’ve taken Media instead. Neville can’t act - and, worse still, he can barely hold on to the bad Irish accent he’s forced to do. His native Leeds is inescapable. Blaise is never best pleased with him.

Then again, Blaise is never best pleased with anyone. He’s shouted his way through almost every rehearsal, picking apart Ron and Neville’s fairly listless performances to the last detail, trying to encourage some enthusiasm in them that’s hard to muster for two boys interested only in passing, and not by the margin passed. Neville feels bad, in a way. Blaise is a good actor, and is just evil and angry enough to be a good director - but even with Neville trying to constantly practice at home and Ron working up as much emotion in his voice as he possibly can, they can’t compete. Neville and Ron are turning Blaise into a laughingstock.

“Well, I mean,” Ron scoffs one lunchtime in one of the drama rehearsal rooms. “I’m doing my bloody best. Sorry it’s not good enough for Stalin over there.”

“He’s not  _ that _ bad,” Neville says softly.

“You’re just trying to make him seem nicer so you’re not so disgusted when you have to kiss him,” Ron says testily. But Neville’s not so sure. “You can, like - kiss me first, if you want. For practice. So your first kiss doesn’t have to be _ him _ .” Ron looks away as he says it, flustered by his courage.

Neville dismisses the idea, flushing, and lets the days march on until the first proper rehearsal with staging and costumes. Not that Neville’s costume is anything more than just his casual clothes, but this is the rehearsal where he has to kiss Blaise for the first time, and even Blaise decides to address his nerves this time.

“Neville,” he says. “It’s fine. It’s just the three of us right now, and trust me when I say that no-one now or at the class performance will be judging your kissing abilities.”

“But everyone will remember if I fuck it up!”

“You can’t fuck it up, Neville. It’s kissing. Technically, it’s biologically hardwired.”

“I could fuck anything up, trust me.”

“Neville,” Blaise sighs. “Have some _ faith _ , darling, or you’ll never get any better at anything.” Without warning, which Neville supposes he’s glad of, Blaise takes Neville’s face into his hands and kisses him; Neville freezes with shock, and absolute inexperience, but finds himself acting on an impulse, kissing back, and when Blaise breaks away, his hands are touching Blaise’s waist. Neville blushes fiercely. “See? You weren’t so bad after all.”

“I don’t know about that,” Neville says bashfully, and Blaise swats at him with his copy of the script.

“Did you hear  _ anything  _ I just said?”

“Yes!”

In truth, Neville thinks he probably liked that kiss a little more than he expected to. He knows that kissing is nice, and he knows that he’s gay, but - he wonders, as rehearsals draw to a close, if maybe he likes Blaise in a way beyond just being casual acquaintances. He knows he has no chance with someone so beautiful and popular, so he supposes that it’s okay to tell Ron - they’ve practically shared their whole life stories since starting the play, and if there’s anyone he can complain to, it’s him.

Ron groans, hiding his face in his hands. “Oh, my God, me too. It’s gross.  _ He’s  _ gross. But - so pretty. And so out of our leagues. And I want to hate him so much because he’s such a prick but I just kinda bloody  _ love it _ . I wish I was getting to kiss him. You’re a bastard.”

Neville, as it happens, seems to have been born with more luck than he was expecting: he’s about to leave for home after their last after-school rehearsal, hot on the heels of Ron, when Blaise taps his shoulder and asks him on a date.

Neville hovers. He thinks. He wants to say yes, but he just has this nagging feeling -

“Only if Ron can come,” he says boldly. God, please don’t let this fuck up his date; what  _ possessed _ him? He begins to think he’s lost himself the date of his dreams when Blaise laughs.

“What, so we’re a triad instead of a couple?”

“If that’s okay.”

“That sounds like the dream,” Blaise purrs, tucking a strand of Neville’s hair behind his ear. “We’ll plan this tomorrow, then. After the performance.” Neville nods, and is only half surprised when Blaise leans down to kiss him; now, he lets himself expect it, lets his thoughts be wild and bold and more daring than before.

The performance, all in all, doesn’t go too badly - Blaise reckons they should all scoop good grades for it as they walk to the bathroom to change back into their uniforms. “For my directorial debut,” he says, “it wasn’t too bad at all.”

“For the crowd,” Ron adds. “What about for us?”

“Isn’t a date enough recompense?”

“A date?” Ron glances over wildly at Neville, who beams and nods. “Oh, blimey. Well, maybe. But it might take two to pay back all that. Hard work doesn’t come cheap!”

Blaise laughs again; he has a brilliant laugh, distinctive but not silly, clearly just the laugh of someone enjoying themselves. “Two dates sounds better than one,” he says, and shuts himself in a stall.

Ron rushes Neville so fast that this kiss is completely unexpected, and so fast Neville barely even gets to lean into it, a fact he rectifies by kissing Ron back.

“You beautiful bastard,” Ron whispers. “Two dates!  _ Two  _ dates, with the two of you - Jesus, that’s it, my life has peaked now.” And with that, he disappears into another stall, leaving Neville to ruminate on his reflection and wonder how far his faith could take him, if he applied himself. 


End file.
